Chances are that if you are a business owner that has been in business for a decade you’ve seen how emerging technologies have changed the face of business. Technologies like cloud computing have opened up opportunities for many businesses to get the powerful computing infrastructures they need without massive upfront costs. As this trend continues, the IT services has begun to move past core IT management and support and onto providing real solutions for the modern business. Today, we will look at how the Managed Service Provider (MSP) is at the forefront of a data revolution that has no end in sight.
The Managed IT Services Provider
The concept of the Managed IT Services Provider has only been around for over a decade. Many were once break/fix value added resellers (VARs) that dealt in some pretty specific products and services. The shift from break/fix to Managed Services was facilitated by the development of powerful automation software that provided knowledgeable technicians the opportunity to proactively monitor computing networks from a remote location. This provided the businesses with much more effective IT, and much less downtime.
Over the past 10 years or so, the Managed Services channel has grown precipitously. Projected to come in at around $200 billion in 2019, the global IT services market is seeing substantial growth in Asia and Europe, and solid growth in North America where the practice was founded. ChannelE2E estimates that there are nearly 20,000 healthy IT service providers working to cover the IT needs of millions of small businesses, while some of the largest companies in the world continue to offer managed services as a part of their service deliveries.
Industry Growth
One of the major draws of partnering with a managed IT service provider for small businesses is the notion that hiring expert IT talent is expensive. By outsourcing their IT management, the business can receive comparable attention to their IT, while obtaining value from the IT service provider’s direct availability to newer, more robust technologies. Many of these organizations still consider themselves VARs and, as such, have access to the most innovative business-oriented technology. From hardware to software, from networking to security, the modern IT company has access to all of the technology the modern business needs.
The industry’s growth is steady, but companies use of technology has exploded. Most companies in North America and Europe expect their IT expenses to increase in 2019, and in some sectors IT budget growth is as large as 30%. Small and mid-size companies have been extremely active upgrading their IT as newer solutions provide them with more upfront capital, while larger organizations have been rolling out strategic security upgrades to keep organizational risk down.
The largest driver for IT growth is the need to upgrade outdated IT. This is leading the MSP into expanding their offerings. Many organizations have been utilizing cloud computing for all types of reasons, including communications, collaboration, hardware and software deployment, and much, much more. These days, almost anything you can do on a server, you can do on a virtual server hosted in the cloud. This provides modern businesses with an immense amount of security.
Emerging Technologies
For some time IT companies have looked to innovative new technologies to build a catalogue of solutions that would be attractive to any-sized organization. This hasn’t stopped. Today, with data becoming a major commodity for almost any type of organization, these IT companies have begun using their expertise with information systems to push new ways for companies to collect, process, and analyze that data. That’s why you see IT support companies dabbling in data warehousing and business intelligence services; providing value that simply wasn’t there a short time ago.
Another technology that many MSPs have really amped up on recently is managed security services. With use of specialized tools and practices, IT services companies can now provide solutions for any type of organizational security threat. Today’s IT services company is capable of protecting your company with traditional methods of training and monitoring to advanced services like dedicated SIEM services, data forensics, and advanced solutions that utilize machine learning to mitigate threats. The modern IT company prioritizes the security of organizational data like never before.
Tried and True
With all these new technologies emerging, IT companies will have to react to ensure that their trusted IT technicians provide the kind of services and support necessary to the modern business, just as they have for over a decade. On top of all the new solutions available, most MSPs provide organizations with a myriad of services that alone are valuable, but when added together, pay for themselves. Solutions like a dedicated help desk, 24-hour-network monitoring, availability to hardware and cloud services, vendor management, and much, much more, will keep the 2019 version of IT as an essential part of doing business.
If you would like more information about how Flexnet Networks LLC can provide your business with unparalleled value, call us today at (432) 520-3539 to talk to one of our consultants.
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