March 28, 2022
To outsource or not to outsource…that is the question, and it's one that many companies struggle with when it comes to their IT departments. There are obvious advantages to an in-house team if you can successfully recruit and maintain sufficient staff. However, these days that's a pretty big if, as it's getting tougher to attract tech talent, and the demands on IT departments keep growing.
There are also obvious advantages to having a dedicated technology provider that can scale their services up or down as needed, and keep up with modern cybersecurity threats.
The ideal choice is often not to choose at all. Co-managed IT offers the best of both worlds.
What is Co-Managed IT?
Co-Managed IT is a service model where an IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) supplements an organization's in-house staff. Co-managed IT offers a great deal of flexibility, and organizations can pick and choose how much additional help they need, and in which areas.
Almost Every Organization Needs Additional IT Support
Even IT departments that were fully staffed prior to and during the pandemic are now finding themselves overwhelmed with the additional challenge of remote and hybrid work environments. Over half of IT professionals have reported it's one of their biggest challenges moving forward. With each significant change to how a business operates, additional tools have to be evaluated and added. Over the last couple of years, all of that took time that most IT departments didn't have, and many are still struggling to find.
Cybersecurity threats increased 600% during the pandemic and cost the world's economy roughly $6 trillion in 2021 alone. It's no accident that cybercrime increased dramatically during this time; it’s inherently more challenging to secure remote workplaces and devices. And as IT departments became overwhelmed trying to accommodate remote work, they didn’t have time to prioritize critical software patches and upgrades.
Putting off critical updates leaves companies highly vulnerable to malware and ransomware attacks. Furthermore, each successful attack only compounds the risk. Hackers have reinvested their ill-gotten gains in improving their schemes, making their attacks more sophisticated, and therefore more dangerous.
Adding staff is one solution, but as I mentioned before, top IT talent is hard to come by. It's also a very difficult time for many businesses to consider committing to more full-time employees. Co-managed IT providers, on the other hand, are able to scale their offerings up or down as needed. For all of these reasons, along with a few additional benefits, co-managed IT is becoming an increasingly attractive solution.
Additional Benefits of Co-Managed IT Services
1. Retain Current Staff
The more overworked your IT department is, the more you should be concerned about retaining the staff you have. They can easily find work elsewhere, and if the grass is significantly greener somewhere else, you could start losing people you can't afford to lose. Lowering their stress level and increasing their job satisfaction by shifting less desirable tasks to a trusted MSP can minimize talent attrition.
2. Increase Cybersecurity
If technology changes by the year, cybersecurity changes by the month, if not the week. It can be very challenging for even the best in-house IT staff to monitor emerging threats, let alone develop strategies to counteract them. MSPs like Marco can, and they also have the resources to provide 24/7 monitoring and support…something that's completely out-of-reach for most in-house teams.
3. Get a Broader Perspective
Every organization has its blind spots. An MSP that works with a variety of businesses across multiple sectors will have experience with different sets of tools, and might be able to provide solutions that your own team wouldn't have considered.
Marco's UnifyIT Can Help
Marco's co-managed IT is called UnifyIT, which offers clients a wide variety of service bundles to choose from. We take enormous pride in our ability to pair seamlessly with internal staff and have designed a customizable ticketing platform that allows your staff to service some tickets internally, and route others to us. If you'd like more information about whether fully-managed or co-managed IT is the right solution for your organization, our experts are happy to get to know your needs and make a recommendation.
