Daniel O’Neil, Head of Managed Service Provision, Paradyn, explains what managed services are and how managed IT services can benefit companies across a range of business areas.
The fast-moving world of IT has become incredibly complex. Be it new methods of cyber-attacks or evolving cloud technologies, it can be hard for organisations to keep up with the latest technology trends. Managed services have emerged as the most viable solution for the majority of organisations looking to keep their IT environment up-to-date with prevailing best-practices.
Managed services allow you to delegate IT operations to a third-party provider with a specialised IT skillset. The level of support from these managed service providers (MSPs) can vary and is usually agreed upon in a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the customer paying a monthly fee for receipt of these services.
When effectively executed, a managed service provides you with all the capability of a well-resourced IT department to ensure the smooth functioning of your daily IT operations. This enables you and your internal IT team to focus on strategic projects that can add value to your business and help achieve growth and long-term success.
As more and more business functions become reliant on technology, the pressure grows on IT managers to meet performance, reliability, user-experience and security requirements. Today, more people than ever are working from home or remotely, further adding to the IT teams workload. It’s wise to take stock of your IT assets and network, and critically assess what areas of your environment are underperforming or are at risk. Having assessed your needs, it may be worth exploring how an MSP could help you to resolve issues, address weaknesses or free up time for your IT team.
Here are three key pillars of IT operations that an MSP can assist with:
1. Infrastructure
A well-functioning IT system is built on solid infrastructure. Depending on size, location, customers, industry and objectives, a business’s IT infrastructure needs can vary greatly. The cloud holds many advantages for businesses; building the required infrastructure and managing a customer’s migration to cloud is becoming a common task for MSPs. Likewise, an MSP can help to optimise your on-site servers or build a hybrid environment.
Working with an MSP can help you to decide the best set-up for your needs while mapping out a roadmap to change; helping to get the most out of your existing systems while managing risk and assessing new technologies.
2. Connectivity
Data is the lifeblood of organisations today and it’s vital that businesses get the most out of their internet connection. In order to stay productive, employees require reliable, fast and scalable internet access. This can become especially complex for organisations with multiple office locations and many turn to an MSP’s specialist knowledge in this area for support. Managed wide area networks (WAN) and Software-Defined WANs enable your business to improve bandwidth use and performance for critical applications across multiple sites. Businesses can leverage an MSPs specialist knowledge in areas like this to gain access to a high capacity, secure and cost-effective connectivity solution.
3. Security
It can be difficult to stay abreast of the latest cybersecurity trends with cybercriminals continuing to develop new methods of attack and refine their ways of targeting and exploiting weaknesses. But it has never been more important to ensure you have a holistic view of your business environment with users, customers, devices and data all adequately protected. Apart from the financial damage, security breaches can have a huge impact of your organisation’s reputation.
While there are a huge number of security functions that can be delegated to an MSP, some key areas include managed firewall deployment and services, integrated network security, cloud security, compliance assistance and device management. The world of IT security is constantly changing and given the importance of staying protected, this is a very commonly outsourced function to a specialist cybersecurity services provider.
Tailored managed service
No two companies have the same IT requirements and the first step to engaging with an MSP should always be an in-depth consultation so they can evaluate your environment before determining how they can assist and present you with a proposed agreement tailored for your unique needs.
Paradyn is Ireland’s only end-to-end IT and communications service provider and offers one unified solution to all of your IT needs. Speak with a member of our team today to learn more about our high quality IT service offering and to discuss what we could do for you!
 | Daniel O’Neill Head of MSP, Paradyn Daniel provides the expertise in the development and management of LANs, WANs, corporate storage, Operating Systems, public/private cloud and security systems. Skilled in designing infrastructure and implementing technology to support businesses in core and edge site topography. Adept at translating business needs into technology requirements to enable the achievement of business objectives and in managing all phases of technical & business projects. Cluster and Storage expertise across numerous designs/technologies to enable business productivity achieving high grade SLA’s. |
