As a professional field, IT is both expansive and deep. Depending on your line of business, your internal IT department can either be handling a small fleet of desktops with productivity software, or it could be maintaining floors filled with workstations and large server rooms.
There’s a lot to consider when it comes to the pros and cons of an internal IT department. An internal IT department knows the ins and outs of your business and they can provide you with the appropriate services to meet your network and business demands. And since they don’t have other clients to worry about, they can spend all of their time carefully monitoring your networks and troubleshooting technical issues for you rather than dividing their time between clients.
But, at the same time, an internal IT department can also hinder future business growth. As your business continues to grow, you’ll have to expand your internal IT department accordingly and that can cost a lot of money. Plus, it can be hard to secure top talent as the competition is fierce.
Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), in particular, are often hard-pressed to cover all IT bases, such as:
- Hardware maintenance and repairs
- Software updates and upgrades
- Network monitoring and systems administration
- Cybersecurity protection
- Data backups
- Data regulations compliance
Since businesses run on IT, it follows that IT departments are integral to business operations. This is especially evident when the department is swamped with tasks or has to deal with downtime—the company tends to slow down with them. This is why augmenting your IT department’s resources with those of a managed IT services provider (MSP) is a wise strategy.
If you’ve been asking yourself, “Why do I need an MSP?” Keep reading as we compare MSPs vs. internal IT.
Wait, won’t there be redundancies or butting of heads between internal and external teams?
No and no. Top-notch MSPs do thorough consultations with their clients first to ascertain what the latter need in terms of managed IT solutions in Toronto. To avoid redundancies and butting of heads, managed IT services providers and IT departments work together to come up with strategies on how to improve processes and help achieve business growth.
One of the benefits of MSPs is that they take on repetitive yet important tasks such as monitoring and providing 24/7/365 IT support so that internal IT staff can focus on the company’s strategic initiatives. It can also be that one party handles Tier 1 or general support tickets while the other party receives escalated or Tier 2 tickets when specialization is called for.
Additionally, it’s often the case that IT staff are frustrated with the internal IT infrastructure they have to work with, and that they get frustrated further when they call for the necessary improvements and are denied. For the sake of illustration, let’s say that they suggest implementing a hybrid cloud setup for the company. This pitch gets shut down because the organization lacks the budget for capital expenses.
In this case and many others like it, IT MSP services in Toronto are not their adversaries, but their allies. IT service providers can turn this into an operational expense by offering the latest technologies through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). In this way, IT teams are able to access state-of-the-art solutions with affordable monthly fees rather than committing their organization to a large capital outlay.
Won’t I get the same results if I just added specialists to my internal IT team?
That certainly is a possibility, but first of all, you’d be competing with everyone else to attract, hire, and retain top IT talent—and that can be a significant challenge. Secondly, hiring more people means limiting their workload with shifts, juggling even more holidays, and providing competitive compensation and employee benefits.
However, when you partner with MSPs in Toronto, all staffing costs and concerns are handled by that MSP. This means that you enjoy cost savings plus all the benefits of having IT specialists without any of the headaches that would’ve come from hiring them yourself.
Are you saying that I should just fire my IT staff and outsource all IT services to an MSP instead?
Not at all! It isn’t a matter of having an MSP vs. internal IT department. On the contrary, we’re saying that there are a lot of benefits of MSPs and that they can be a big boon for your IT department and your business as a whole. With an MSP bolstering the capabilities of your IT staff, you can make your company more agile as well as scale its operations faster than you would if you stuck with internal hiring processes.
So what else? What are some other benefits of hiring MSPs?
IT departments, especially small teams, are really busy, and this can create tunnel vision, where everyone focuses on the issues and infrastructures already present within their own respective business environments. That is, they can:
- Lose touch with the latest IT innovations and regulations
- Become limited in their IT experiences
- Resist or delay the adoption of new IT solutions as these will mean unfamiliar changes to systems and infrastructures
With that in mind, here are some major benefits of hiring MSPs to support your existing internal IT infrastructure:
Enhances Existing IT Infrastructure
Managed IT services providers, by nature of their service to a number of different organizations and industries, offer a far wider view and draw from a deeper well of experiences across applications, operating environments, and security scenarios. This “seen-it-all” experience can be used to supplement and support your existing IT staff as they encounter new challenges within their day-to-day environment. Plus, it can be tremendously beneficial when it comes time to make changes due to growth, security concerns, competitive pressures, or compliance requirements.
Brings Expertise at Minimum Costs
Another reason why you need an MSP is because professional MSPs are in the business of IT and must continuously demonstrate their value to their customers. One of the primary ways that’s done is by regularly upgrading skills through certification and recertification on existing and new technologies. Many companies are challenged by training, sometimes because of cost, but more often because of time—they simply can’t afford to have their IT staff out of the office for days at a time. Top-tier managed IT solutions in Toronto make certifications a top priority, meaning you’ll get everyday access to IT specialists trained on the very latest technologies, equipment, and techniques.
Offers 24/7 Support and Automates Repetitive IT Tasks
When it comes to choosing between an MSP vs. your internal IT department, the choice is pretty simple. Why not choose both? Internal IT departments are certainly an important aspect of any modern business. But they can’t handle everything on their own. The operating and network connectivity costs, not to mention purchasing additional hardware and software to support your growing business would be through the roof. Combining the services of both internal IT and managed IT solutions in Toronto guarantees that all of your bases will be covered at all times.
There are a lot of pros and cons of internal IT. Therefore, professional MSPs can work in tandem with your existing internal IT department and act as an extension when it’s time to expand your IT needs. With an MSP in Toronto, you’ll have access to ongoing support whenever you need it—yes, that includes evenings and weekends. With technicians working round-the-clock to secure and monitor your networks, you can have peace of mind in knowing that there’s a robust IT support infrastructure backing your business and automating mundane or repetitive tasks to take some of the pressure off of your internal IT department.
To sum it all up, MSPs in Toronto are not in opposition to internal IT departments. At XBASE Technologies, we offer full-service managed IT solutions in Toronto and can also augment your internal IT support team. We are there where and when you need us.
Talk to our experts to discover how our Exponentially Better™ IT MSP services in Toronto can support and enable your IT staff and help your organization achieve its goals and dreams.
Like This Article?
Sign up below and once a month we'll send you a roundup
of our most popular posts