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Considerations and risks when choosing a managed IT service

Welcome to our first post of the new year!

Fully managed (or outsourced) IT is a very large part of the IT industry nowadays. More and more companies are seeing outsourcing the IT as an option. Price, convenience and offloading of the complexity of IT can seem very attractive.

In a lot of ways this can make sense. WCS offer this kind of infrastructure management, and have experience in many of the options available today. Some of these options are:

  • Contract phone support
  • Call-out to site, based on agreed SLA’s
  • Remote support (VPN to network or individual PC dial-in)
  • Remote (automated) monitoring and alerting

As you may understand, some of these options give far more or less control (and as such, quicker response/resolution times) to the managing parties.

Sounds great? It can be. But,  what happens when you don’t choose the right support company?

By handing control of your IT (and likely most critical) systems to a third-party, you are also outsourcing the risk. It is for this reason that it is incredibly important that you choose a company that can not only provide references for the type of support you require, but also for the complexity of the network that you need supporting. IT can be very complex in some cases. Legacy systems, non standard configurations & unusual hardware configurations are all things that the supporting company must consider when providing support.

Did you know that the recent catastrophic RBS Bank IT failure has been attributed (by ex-employees) to outsourcing IT  to a foreign country and in turn less experienced (and likely over-committed) engineers?

It is important that the right people are there (with the right experience in problem solving) to support you. Almost as important is that if an unknown arises, this is discussed with the client and all things considered before network changes are implemented.

WCS pride ourselves as working with our valued customers on as much as a personal and close level as is required. This not only delivers the best value possible to you, but keeps your confidence in us and allows us to do the best for you. Most importantly though, it ensures that the resources that we have been contracted to look after are protected.

Beware of companies who do not have the required level of experience when considering your individual business needs. We have all heard the great sales pitches, but does the IT support company completely understand your needs?

As with most of our posts on choice and advice, this one came about after being made aware of another major issue that had arisen (from another IT provider) which resulted in loss of access to critical business services due to a general lack of care, not following best practice and also not following the customers direct requests.

Please contact WCS to discuss your IT management and support needs. It won’t cost you anything for our free advice, but it could save you or your business money.

 

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