Managed IT Services obfuscate costs
As an IT Consultancy we at Hayachi Services reject the concept of Managed IT Services. We often work with Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to help them retain clients, and the churn of clients that many MSPs have is typical of the sector.
As a small business you need two things from your IT Estate to ensure you can grow: stability and reliable service. This is more oft than not the opposite of what a Managed Service Provider delivers.
A subscription for only minimal support is not how businesses can function: standing still in a race is a sure way to lose. Also consider that an MSP would have you pay to document your IT Estate, in turn meaning that you would have to pay a premium for any effective and efficient IT Support. It follows you otherwise pay for a poorer service. This is opposite of what ethical business practices are.
Businesses need to patch, update and sustain their operation over a period of time – documenting an IT Estate is central to this as otherwise there is no way to know what to patch and what to upgrade. MSPs do not offer this as a part-and-parcel service with support but an added service, one without which your business will fail.
As you can imagine this all costs money to do properly. We often find the SME customers of an MSP are effectively bullied into paying ‘extra’ to upgrade critical systems such as their accounting platform as it isn’t included in their fees. Avoiding unexpected costs is a core tenet preserving cashflow, which is not achieved when using even award-winning Managed Service Providers.
Through obfuscating necessary IT costs, MSPs ensure you experience avoidable downtime and IT issues. This costs your business money and damages its reputation.
Managed Security Services needs in-house IT
A Managed IT Service Desk is often staffed by junior members of staff who are new to the profession. They are your first-responders in the event of a cyber-attack alongside proactively identifying and mitigating IT Security risks. While it is laudable to support new-entries gaining experience in the sector, that is not helpful during a security or critical incident.
Where Small Business opt to engage a Managed Security Services provider you must consider that they will not be providing on-site expertise to assist with mitigation. A Security Operations Centre (SOC) will often provide the expertise to identify and explain security events, but they depend a dedicated IT team to ultimately resolve them where remote access fails.
This yet again means that even if your business pays for information security experts, MSPs will not be able to respond in-kind to this added service without demanding additional sums be paid first.
At Hayachi Services we have even seen MSPs lose the ‘hardened’ pentested Windows 10 images (that is, more heavily secured installs of Windows 10) which their clients have specifically paid for in order to further secure their estate. Imagine a security company removing your front-door by mistake and leaving the entryway open for months, and you can see how serious an issue that particular incident was.
An alternative to Managed IT Services is to employ a part-time IT Manager and a single Level-3 Apprentice to provide you with reliable Service Desk support. Such an arrangement would cost the same as what an MSP would offer per-head of staff while providing a more consistent experience for your team.
How does IT Consultancy fit in?
Hayachi Services are an IT Consultancy: we do not offer a cost-cutting ‘Managed Service’ because that ultimately costs our clients money in other areas. Instead, we offer specialist professional services that serves as the central foundation to facilitate your growth and success as a business.
Our Service Desk is complimentary to our Deskside Support services because we firmly believe our clients shouldn’t pay for anything but the best service on offer. Any business could hire the very same expertise part-time to meet any MSPs Service Level Agreement: a school leaver with an interest in computers.
Time and again we see that Managed IT Services costs SMEs more money than they purport to save, and delivers a poorer service for it. This is fundamentally opposed to what we as a leading professional services firm believe small businesses like yours deserve.
