How often does your IT team get pulled away from projects to put out fires around the office or behind the glass? They are running from one problem to the next in a recurring battle against software patches, upgrades, networking and server maintenance, and licensing. Does this sound familiar?
Personally, I can always tell when my day is spent just putting out fires. Open email, read, react to the alert, and then reply and fix. Open the next, read, and react. It normally goes on like this until I look down and notice it is 3 PM and I have not even eaten…or worked on the other 30 forward-looking projects I planned on starting.
How about those productive days when you do not have to deal with “fires”? No urgent emails, no interruptions; you’re just simply productive.
From an IT perspective, there is one simple way to continue the productivity trend; stop buying and looking after your own infrastructure equipment! Partnering with a private cloud or managed services provider allows companies to focus on the issues that lead to business success. Who needs the risk and burden of dealing with that back-end mess? Not you!
While this method helps free up valuable IT resources, it can also make your CFO happy by removing the need for emergency purchases, such as suddenly needing more storage or needing to replace outdated systems. Instead of the normal unpredictable IT buying cycles, your company can gain some financial stability. Sound too good to be true?
In order to keep it simple, here are a few real-world analogies:
Leasing a Car:
Just like leasing a car, redistributing all aspects of your day-to-day IT gives you all the benefits of the latest technology, married with the best in service for a single monthly fee. Also just like leasing a car, there are options to improve the model – but only if you need it.
Cell Phone Plans:
When mobile phones first came out, it cost about $1000 to get the device, and this was before you even started to pay for actually using the thing. Now, the device is still pricey (give or take a couple of hundred) but you can get it “for free” as part of a contract – essentially delaying payment over the term. Many Managed Services packages provide state-of-the-art technology that is refreshed when you need it to be, allowing you to know you are always up to date, without actually having to do anything.
Buying a Pizza:
For most people, 80% of a pizza is the same – the base doesn’t change, the sauce doesn’t change, the cheese doesn’t change. What makes it different and a better experience is the toppings, which there are many options and selections. IT is similar – the majority of corporate infrastructure is the same across industries. Most businesses have the same basic needs when it comes to servers, storage, networking etc… What makes you different is the unique parts of IT (your CRM, your applications, websites etc.) A complete Managed Services offering takes on the base, takes away the risk, the man hours, and the loss of productivity while allowing you to concentrate of the “special sauce” that make you company succeed.
Interested in getting off the IT Treadmill? Contact us to learn how you can focus on your business, and not your systems.
