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Evaluating Managed Services

Like most organizations today, you rely on information technology (IT) to run your business and to stay competitive. Frequently, small events remind you of how important IT is to your business success, and how tightly your operations are tied to your IT equipment functioning properly. For example, when a server goes down, your employees lose access to customer information and are unable to work. When you lose Internet access, employees are unable to respond to customer inquiries or communicate with vendors via email.

As the demands for more sophisticated applications and devices grow, companies need to support a more complex mixture of operating systems, servers and workstations. For example, virtualization, a technology scarcily mentioned three years ago, is now becoming ubiquitious as organizations try to reduce costs. Companies with small or non-existent IT staffs struggle to keep up with the management of these increasingly complex systems, leaving the door open to outages, security threats, and data loss that can send a company reeling.

Most businesses recognize that properly maintaining their computers and network with insufficient in-house staff, or ad hoc computer repair service, is a challenging task at best, and fraught with pitfalls that deplete their bottom line. Spottily maintained systems suffer frequent outtages, data loss, and lead to significant productivity decline as increasingly employees sit idle; waiting for equipment to be repaired, so work can resume. Often, much needed maintenance on workstations and peripherals is deferred, so equipment with higher visibility can be kept operational. Daily IT operations are condensed into a single function of putting out the latest fire.

Managed Services let you off load routine but vital IT equipment monitoring, management and maintenance functions to an experienced provider, so you can focus on running your business and keeping it competitive. The managed services provider in effect becomes an extension of your business, proactively maintaining your equipment by resolving issues before they become problems that cause equipment to fail; efficiently managing equipment life cycles, and replacing aging devices to boost uptime and maximize employee productivity.

With all that is required to properly manage and maintain an IT infrastructure, managed services becomes a no-brainer. But where do you begin? How do you start the process that leads to hiring the right managed services provider for your business? Begin by assessing where you are and what you are doing. The following set of questions will help you to accomplish this. By documenting your current IT environment and operations, you will develop a clear list of the areas that need most attention.

	Areas to consider			Questions regarding your infrastructure and operations

	Infrastructure components and their importance to your business			How many servers, PCs, mobile devices do you currently manage? How many internal and external resouces do you depend on for support of your infrastructure? How many users do you have and what applications do they depend on? How many hours per day do employees use your infrastructure? At what time do they start and end their workday? Is your current IT support providing adequate coverage for these work hours? How many devices do you currently have in storage that need to be repaired? How many calls do you receive each week from users inquiring when work will begin on their problem? How many hours per day does your staff spend collecting device configuration information?

	Time dedicated to routine IT management matters			How much time does your IT staff spend managing network components, servers, desktops, peripherals and other devices? How much time is spent doing routine tasks like backups?

	Time dedicated to IT infrastructure problem resolution			How much time does your IT staff spend researching and investigating problems? How long does it normally take to resolve problems from the time they are reported?

	Infrastructure management capabilities assessment			How well does your staff keep up with patching, updating and making configuration and other critical changes to systems? How often does fixing a problem simply create or expose another? Is maintenance being deferred because of a lack of time, personnel or expertise? Is your staff able to detect and fix issues before they develop into problems? Is a staff member available to fix problems outside of normal work hours?

	Impact on your business			How satisfied are you with the quality of IT support you currently have, especially compared to the cost of that service? How many work hours and dollars are expended daily to minimize the impact of problems on your business? How many hours of downtime does your IT infrastructure experience monthly? How much productivity loss does your IT infrastructure problems cause monthly? What is the impact on your organization of the downtime you experience? Are there gaps or inefficiencies in your IT support?

Now that you have documented the areas of consideration, it is time to consider a managed services vendor that will meet your needs. There are numerous providers with a variety of offerings, so how do you choose the one that is right for you? How do you select the one that is right for your business? Below is a set of questions that will help you to evaluate managed services providers and find the one that is the best fit for you.

	Assessment Criteria			Questions to ask the managed services provider

	Infrastructure assessment and implementation			How will the provider assess and document your current environment? Does the provider have tools and methodologies that can streamline the process? What will be done remotely and what (if anything) will be performed on-site? How long will the process take?

	Hardware and Software experience			What type of IT expertise and depth of experience does the vendor have with the hardware and software my company uses? Does the vendor have experience managing systems in a hetereogeneous environment?

	Options and Scalability			Does the vendor offer flexible plans with options that suit my needs? Does the vendor have the personnel and infrastructure to accommodate increased service requirements?

	Pricing			Can the vendor clearly explain what the pricing covers and does not cover? Does the vendor offer a variety of plans with different price points? Will there be cost overruns if the vendor spends extra time to resolve a problem?

	Reporting and visibility			Does the vendor supply tools that allow me to manage and direct their workflow? What types of reports does the vendor provide and how often? Can the vendor customize the information or frequency of reports?

	Personnel and response times			Can the vendor provide a consistent support team or will service be provided from a pool? How will the vendor respond to my needs and keep me informed? Does the vendor provide 24/7 monitoring service? What service and response levels does the vendor guarantee? Are all the vendor's guarantees backed by a service level agreement? Does the vendor's service level agreement contain reimbursement clauses? Does the vendor's infrastructure track service level agreement infractions?

With the needs of businesses like yours in mind, WAN-Genuity developed a set of managed service plans and the infrastructure to support them. Our goal is to maximize productivity by eliminating downtime and all the costs associated with it. Unlike other management service vendors that focus on fixing broken equipment, our focus is on keeping your equipment running efficiently. This is one of the things that sets us apart.

Vendors that confuse the process

There are large vendors across the U.S. offering managed services remotely from out of state. After seeing the results of such services and the negative impact they have on businesses, we know this is not a good choice for businesses and do not recommend it. Our managed services are only available to customers within our geographic area. When your server goes down, and your employees cannot service customers or your production line comes to a halt, you need someone on-site within the hour to replace parts and get it working again. An out of state provider cannot provide this level of service. Your business needs and deserves a reliable, local provider.

Next: Our Managed Services Plans