Just a few short years ago, the image of an IT department for small and medium businesses was one of Dilbert-looking technicians noodling around with Cat 5 cable and speaking in a blend of Klingon and Robot. In other words, IT seemed completely remote, complicated and inaccessible to most employees. Additionally, each new hardware and software deployment, including installing malware protection, could take weeks to manually implement across the enterprise, and rarely went smoothly.
One solution – outsourced IT – has found greater acceptance in the past few years as its benefits have become more tangible to even small businesses. It is estimated that globally, 74 percent of companies use some form of outsourced IT solution, up 25 percent from 2009.
Read further for compelling reasons why a small or medium business should consider the IT-outsourcing trend.
Cost savings
Moving IT off-site can save SMBs thousands of dollars per year. As most business decisions are predicated on the bottom line, this is often the main driver in the decision to migrate. Areas of savings include:
Reducing hardware expenses. Servers, storage, cabling, cooling, and data center square footage expense can now be on a cloud vendor’s dime, not yours.
No salary or benefits expenses for IT employees.
Potential tax savings by converting capital expenditures (servers), that depreciate slowly over time, to a monthly cost which can potentially be deducted in the current tax year.
The latest software versions – hassle-free
Outsourcing IT means software, including malware protection for endpoints, can be updated automatically by the provider. This obviates the need for a local tech to run around taking workstations offline for upgrades.
Furthermore, updating software not only unlocks newer features but also closes exploits in older versions that might allow hacker penetration. So it's worth exploring any platform that can make this process painless and automatic, such as a cloud service.
Focus on your business, not technical issues
Anyone who survived working in Corporate America from the 1980s onwards is familiar with the spectacle and lost productivity that accompanies the proverbial “system going down.”
When outsourcing IT to the cloud, this nightmare occurs less often as data is often distributed redundantly across many servers that are monitored constantly, leading to greater stability and uptime, and less worrying about IT matters.
Improved security
Reputable outsourced IT providers are dead serious about security against malware, zero-day hacks, and other intrusions and constantly monitor and update their protection schemes.
For most SMBs, outsourcing will provide a more frequent and secure backup solution than their existing IT setups. Furthermore, as the data is kept off-site, it is well- protected from a local catastrophe, such as a fire or flooding.
No new employees to manage when scaling up
Scalability is easy with outsourced IT – simply contact the vendor for more storage, memory, and processors as needed. There is no longer any need for job postings, interviews, expensive training, personality clashes, worker’s compensation or other common HR issues and liabilities just to get tech personnel to handle the increased operations.
Instead, you can focus your payroll budget on production or sales staff that directly drive revenue.
How to move to the cloud
Prior to outsourcing your IT, draw up a migration plan. Then study the stability and security reputation of outsourcing providers before trusting them with your mission-critical data. Malware protection is increasingly important, so discuss solutions with each candidate to explore what steps they take in the event of a breach.
How do you find a reputable vendor? Check out this list of outsourced IT providers or this one, to begin with. Or, delve into the metrics of some serious cloud provider benchmarking tests.
Outsourced IT is no longer something to fear… as long as you do your homework.
