If your business already has a large in-house IT department or merely a dedicated staff of one or two IT professionals, hiring a Managed Services Provider (MSP) may feel like a moot idea. Not everyone needs an MSP for their IT needs, right? The answer to that isn’t as black and white as you might think. While you may not need an MSP for all your IT work, teaming up with one can give you support and peace of mind when you need it most.
4 Limitations of an Internal IT Staff
Hiring an internal IT staff can give your company reliable and on-site support for the day-to-day workings of your business, but you may not have considered all the limitations involved.- Narrow Expertise Internal IT teams, especially those with only one or two employees, usually require professionals who can work on a wide variety of IT issues. Your in-house team should be able to handle the day-to-day technical hiccups that occur in an office environment. This can mean that while all of the basics are handled, the IT team lacks the in-depth expertise in specific areas, such as cybersecurity, networks, and infrastructure, that a larger staff can offer.
- Dependency on One or Two Employees When your entire IT department consists of one person, you have no IT department whenever they take time off or leave the company. Even if you have an IT team of multiple employees, the loss of one person for a day/week/forever can dramatically interfere with your IT team’s ability to handle the normal workload or emergency situations.
- Time-Consuming Help Desk If an internal staff is dealing with one-off help desk issues, such as printer problems or forgotten passwords, they don’t always have time to work on the essential maintenance of IT systems or perform larger improvements to secure and upgrade your business’s infrastructure. This could leave you unprotected to outside attacks or perpetually dealing with smaller computer issues instead of focusing on the big picture. It can also leave your staff stressed and scrambling to try and get everything done.
- Limited IT Resources A small IT team often comes with a small budget as well. This can mean that enterprise-grade IT tools are too expensive to purchase on your own, and some resources can only be purchased in bulk. What is affordable to a small IT team may not be enough to keep your business secure and well-maintained for the long-term, which could cost you more time or money down the road.
What Is Co-Managed IT Support?
Co-managed IT support is a service that supplements your in-house IT staff rather than replaces them. Internal IT teams are often better at handling day-to-day troubleshooting and can lack the time to tackle greater infrastructure projects. When you partner with an MSP for co-managed IT services, your IT team and the MSP’s experts work together to make sure that all your needs are met.
How Can Partnering with an MSP Help Your Business’s IT Team?
Bringing in an MSP to supplement your internal IT team allows your organization to fill skill gaps and ensure full IT coverage in both service and skillset. Without the correct support, your current IT team can become frustrated as well. Junior Systems Administrator Quentin Topping recalls the challenges of working in a small IT department at a previous workplace: From my experience working in smaller IT departments, we struggled to find time to do projects and maintain our network. Pretty much all my grunt work was working on simple tasks like adding network users, configuring tablets, etc. We were too busy doing day-to-day IT tasks to handle long-term projects. We lacked any cyber security expert, so we always had to outsource that. But the limitations of a small internal IT team don’t have to stop your business from being secure and maintained, from the day-to-day tasks to the large, in-depth projects. By working alongside an MSP, you won’t have to- miss out on the best suite of IT tools. An MSP brings with it the best software and monitoring tools to keep you secure and up and running that would be cost prohibitive to purchase on your own.
- hire and manage a large IT team. An MSP brings a wide array of professional IT staff with different specialties and backgrounds who are ready to handle whatever your business needs.
- worry about your IT team members being off-duty or leaving. An MSP ensures your IT support remains covered even if you lose an IT team member.
- sacrifice essential maintenance and big projects to keep your employees running day to day. Your IT team can help your employees while an MSP maintains your network, security, and the continuous IT operations that keep your business running.
