Why Should You Consider Going the Outsourcing Route for IT Services?

There’s no question that we are in the era of Big Data. Just think of the many ways we use the web. We go on social networks and post images, status updates, real-time tweets, pictures of our favorite clothes and more on a daily basis. We pay our bills and shop from our Wish Lists. We email on our personalized accounts and save documents onto cloud-based storage spaces. All of these things produce data, and as our production of data proliferates, the need for greater storage capacity as well as network optimization to ensure maximum uptime and security becomes greater.
Unfortunately, though, for a small or medium sized enterprise, this could be very problematic. The amount of money it takes to store all of this data, maintain and update current hardware, cool down that existing hardware, and hire and train new staff could take up a significant portion of the business’s budget. Add on top of that the fact that IT staff has to focus on daily troubleshooting rather than work on Big Picture items that could be more beneficial for the company, and one could see why more and more businesses are choosing to outsource their IT services.
In 2012, businesses spent more than 23% of their IT budget on outsourced services, and this number is sure to go up by the end of 2013. If you’re still on the fence of whether or not you should look into managed IT services, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Scalability: With managed IT services, you’ll have the infrastructure in place to scale your storage capabilities to contend with whatever demands the future holds.
• Lower Costs: Maintaining one’s own data center costs money. If it’s not in new hardware, it’s in maintaining current hardware. By outsourcing these things, you can avoid many of these costs, so you can concentrate your resources elsewhere.
• Security: Security is a major concern for any business as data has become a big business on its own.  Therefore, you need to protect against threats that could compromise your system. Managed hosting services will include the latest anti-virus software to combat any threats. This is especially important if you’re in an industry that demands compliance.
• Expertise: Unfortunately, it can be tough to stay up to date on all of the technologies that are out there. There is so much out there that hiring your own panel of experts can be overwhelming and seemingly impossible. Because an outsourced data center’s business is IT services, it will have dedicated experts in place who can tailor a solution for your business.
• Disaster Recovery: With 24x7x365 monitoring, you will stay in business all of the time. If there is a disaster of any kind, like a natural disaster or human error, you will quickly go back online as there will be measures in place to avoid a long term outage.
• Focus: With outsourced IT services, you can focus on the things that matter and not have to worry about the little IT things that might occur. You’ll have the peace of mind of knowing your network will be up to date and ready to handle any challenges that you might confront in this new way to do business. 

Jim Sanders writes on IT issues and cloud computing for small businesses. He freelances for many IT companies in the Mid-Atlantic