What Is Managed Services?
A managed service is a vendor-managed and customizable IT solution for small to mid-size and enterprise-level organizations. It starts with the strategy, then a complete implementation with hardware, software and support.
Managed Service provides the customers with the following benefits:
- Peace of Mind: with IT managed services so you can focus on your business or services.
- Lowered Costs: for overall technology procurement and operations while ensuring platforms, solutions, and tools are always relevant, consistent and cost-effective.
- Reduced Calls: for support through consistency in the technology experience and training resulting in better user productivity.
- Minimized Risk: with proactive IT services focused on managing vulnerabilities proactively before they become problems, and ultimately to avoid unexpected surprises.
Managed services companies ensure that your systems keep running and that issues are identified before they damage your business. It enables predictable, business-focused IT services to optimize your operations, manage your risk, and deliver measurable business value.
Why Outsource IT to a Managed Services Company?
Organizations of all sizes are increasingly evaluating what is core to their operations and weighing the benefits of turning non-core but critical functions to the management of outside partners. With a managed services company, you will be freed to focus on the more strategic aspects of your business.
While IT remains a tremendous enabler of productivity and change, an IT partner understands that it is also a source of incredible risk. Managed services can minimize the inherent risk associated with your IT infrastructure and mitigate the impact arising from any potential IT failure.
What to Look for with Managed Services?
A proactive approach is the core of managed IT services. Every organization needs three things from their technology investment, whether they are a five-person office or a 5000-user environment:
1) Infrastructure: Infrastructure needs to be provisioned, managed and maintained to keep IT services running smoothly and securely.
2) Support: Support is critical for your organization’s IT to be productive and to avoid downtime. And if things go wrong, it will get resolved in a reasonable timeframe.
3) Technology Strategy: The foundational component of the technology strategy is essential to the continued success of your IT.
The heart of being proactive means building a solid foundation where we discover and understand the importance of each IT application and service provided by your organization and develop a technology strategy to keep up with your business demands. This enables you to better leverage your IT investment and keeps up with demand, while balancing regulatory requirements, auditors, and cybersecurity.
Why Choose Managed IT Services?
Businesses primarily look for strategic IT outsourcing when facing challenges due to:
- Increased business complexity
- Rising user demands
- Budgetary pressure
- Difficulty in recruiting, training, and retaining skilled IT staff
Strategic IT outsourcing can provide reliable management of your technology services to allow you to focus on your core business. These outsourcing solutions can reduce total costs associated with an in-house IT department, improve reliability of service levels and prevent harmful downtime with:
- Server and Network Management
- Desktop Management and End User Support
- Device Engineering / Managed Desktop Services
- Print & Image Management
Why Choose Microserve Managed Services?
The key differentiator of Microserve’s Managed Services is our investment in proactive administration and overall technology service leadership (including discovery, architecture, analysis, and proposals). This ensures your organization has the right foundation for us to provide technology and IT support.
Microserve delivers a comprehensive Managed Services solution that covers not only support, but infrastructure and true IT strategy. We do this through four key delivery areas: Support, Centralized Services, Proactive Network Administration and Virtual CIO (vCIO).
Our depth and breadth to technology procurement ensure your organization has a partner with the reach and partnership with an extensive list of manufacturers to support all of the technologies within your current or future state, and act as the primary supplier of technology products to your organization.
4 Fundamental Pillars for IT Managed Services
The success of any IT Technology partnership is not solely dependent on technology. The foundation of Microserve’s managed services solution is based on four fundamental pillars:
1) Successful Service Transition: A successful IT service transition should be largely transparent to your end-users. Microserve places a great deal of emphasis on the transition and uses a mature transition methodology. Through the transition phase, we lay a solid foundation of data, process and communication that ensures not only a smooth transition but also an effective solution going forward.
2) Best Value for Cost: Microserve provides access to an unparalleled level of depth and breadth from our Managed Services team and enterprise-class IT service management methodologies, that is cost-effective with a predictable budget. We provide proven technology and services that enable you to focus on the growth and success of your operations, not on IT. Our solutions can reduce total costs associated with managing IT, while improving reliability and performance and preventing costly downtime. This keeps your staff productive and not spending time on the phone with multiple IT support teams.
3) Long-term Partnership: Microserve exists to help our clients be successful. Our corporate commitment to maintaining a high level of expertise in the constantly changing IT industry, and in developing long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with our clients and technology partners has allowed us to establish and maintain our strong market position. We see ourselves as your partner and will work collaboratively to understand your organizational priorities and challenges and treat them as our own.
4) Relationship Management & Governance: We view our clients as long-term strategic partners, and not just simply meeting Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) – which are indicative of effective service delivery, but not the whole picture. We understand our role in IT governance as it relates to alignment with regulatory and industry standards, the evolution of existing governance models, to identify gaps, recommendations, and creation when identified. Our scale as a procurement partner comes from having strong relationships with many manufacturers and service providers your organization can benefit from.
Microserve Virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) Services
A key differentiator of our offering is our assigned “Virtual CIO” (vCIO). This term is not intended to replace your CIO role, but to augment your “team within a team” approach. Given our deep integration into the day to day IT operations, by assigning our own vCIO to the account Microserve can focus on providing regular technology updates, briefings, and input into your IT strategy. The vCIO does this through maintaining direct lines of communications, operations and project oversight to internal Microserve operational team members.
Aligned with your objectives, your assigned vCIO would be responsible for providing four key functions:
- Long-Term Technology Infrastructure Plan and Technology Standards
- Identification Business Risk: how does technical misalignment affect the business
- Technology Budgeting: to manage client investment in technology
- Business Relationship: not just technical elements, but an understanding of the business to make the right kinds of technology decisions, including future strategic use of new technology.
For more information on how Microserve can help you better leverage your IT investment, visit: Microserve Managed Services
