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IT Support
Are a small to medium size business that is in need of better security for your computer systems and client data? Maybe you have been searching for a local IT company that can provide the support you need. The first search term you may think of is probably not Managed IT Services.  Managed services, is by far one of the most poorly developed search terms on earth. Although managed services is used mostly in the technology arena, the name does not effectively represent managed services, what they have become and why you need to select a provider of managed services for your business.

The Types Of Managed Services

Generally speaking, managed services are provided by an IT service provider or what they refer to as managed service provider (MSP). However, that does not always need to be the case. There are power MSPs, waste MSPs, as well as supply chain MSPs. But in most cases, the term refers to computer security and other Information Technology (IT) projects. If you want to better understand what a MSP does, it makes a lot of sense to understand how the MSP model came about.

The History of Managed IT Services

Before a Fortune 500 list, many small businesses, had IT equipment such as switches, routers, and servers that would periodically go down and need maintenance. If Ford’s production line were to shut down due to a router linked to one of their suppliers, they could not get the parts in a timely manner (often referred to as Just In Time Inventory). Imagine what that will cost in terms of dollars, productivity, and time. There’s also no means to determine if something was broken or was about to break, you learned that the internet was down when the production line ceased to function. Businesses (and the government) soon determined there had to be a better way.

Network Monitoring & Management and SNMP

Now, there’s SNMP or Simple Network Management Protocol. Developers and manufacturers seeing this require built in SNMP into their software and hardware which permitted a few users to easily and quickly control a lot of devices rather than relying on internal organization support to scale. The idea of Network Monitoring and Management came to be. Technicians can see all the log files from every router in a single location and check errors before a device instantly stopped. This solved the problem with scale, however, the issues still remained. Reliability. Things still malfunctioned with SNMP. The Break/Fix or Things Break/We fix it model was every common and it had to be improved.

What’s Wrong With The Break/Fix Model?

Developing automobiles is the primary business of Ford and not to manage internet connections between different locations. Despite the ability to scale, firms realized that they required to outsource to professionals, however, they also required a method to control the costs and lower the outages. On one hand, having a dedicated team for things that may break a couple of times would be expensive and on the other hand, an outage of just one day could blow the budget for the whole year. Additionally, even if they spend all of this money to redo the network with SNMP, they lacked the expertise to manage it properly.

Service Level Agreements Come Into Play

Companies required a way for the IT Managed services provider to feel the burden when something malfunctioned and that’s when the idea of “Service Level Agreements,” came to be. Ford need to spend money to have these intricate networks set up, however, the MSP will be responsible for servicing it, monitor it, and in case of an outage, fix it within the period specified in the contract, because if not, the service provider will be liable for the outage, hence, the term, managed services. Other services were included as time went by, such as Backup and Disaster Recovery, Server Management, Help Desk, Network Security, and more. It went beyond more monitoring. It became a bunch of bundled services that are managed by a service provider. It is easy to translate that specific model to power outages, subpar water quality, or a problem in the supply chain and how the manage services term makes a lot of sense.
SpartanTec, Inc. is your local Managed IT Services provider. We work with small to medium size businesses in North and South Carolina to ensure your computer systems are functioning and safe from outside intrusion.
Call us today or complete out Contact Us form to schedule a time for an in-depth review of your systems.
SpartanTec, Inc.
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
843-420-9760
https://www.spartantec.com/