As things slowly return to normal after the first wave of COVID-19, many of us are left dealing with the fallout from the closures and lockdown restrictions. The sudden influx of workers adopting new ways of using communication and collaboration technology to work remotely taught us all a lot about the capabilities and shortcomings of our systems and infrastructure.
Many people who’ve discovered the work they traditionally did from their office can actually be done as efficiently from home are skipping the commute and continuing to work remotely. In the midst of providing additional bandwidth and more secure access for your remote workers, changes in purchasing habits have made many organizations more dependent on communications systems to interact with customers, partners, and suppliers. This increased burden on infrastructure comes at the same time they are dealing with budget restrictions, furloughed workers, and staffing cuts.
Business as usual may not be good enough to sustain performance and operational expectations while maintaining security requirements and trying to cut costs. Navigating the road to recovery will require many organizations to re-imagine and reinvent how they work to stay competitive, making this an ideal time to take stock of lessons learned from the increased reliance on technology and reevaluate your strategies for moving forward.
If you are facing the challenges of adapting to the “new normal” with fewer IT resources, one of the most impactful adjustments you can make is switching from break/fix support to a managed services model. Proactive managed services are a cost-effective option for offloading your infrastructure headaches so you can focus on the big picture.
Managed services feature predictable monthly or annual costs for 24×7 monitoring and management of your network infrastructure, servers and applications. They can help your organization avoid costly disruptions and prevent disasters. Managed services offer issue resolution, patching, troubleshooting, and escalations, relieving you of the burden of performing the time-consuming tasks required to ensure business continuity and mitigate security risks. Additionally, managed service providers can help you explore the possibilities presented by emerging technologies, offer insight for boosting your capabilities, and help you evaluate and eliminate the choke points exposed by the burdens put on your systems by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Managed services packages can be tailored to your unique needs, goals, and expectations. From basic monitoring to “all you can eat” pricing models, most providers offer tiered bundles of services, with the price increasing from tier to tier as additional services are added. Some providers also offer a la carte pricing that allows you to select the services that fit your specific needs.
Managed services are scalable; they can grow and evolve with your organization as you phase back into normalcy. Managed services plans can be based on the number of active users or devices being covered, with the service fees modified monthly as you add or remove users or devices. This enables your coverage to keep pace as social distancing restrictions are lifted in stages, or new restrictions are imposed if the pandemic flares back up. Managed services offer the flexibility to meet your challenges today and prepare for the future without getting locked into long-term obligations that don’t make sense for your organization.
Cerium Networks is a trusted managed services provider to scores of organizations across the Northwest. They trust their mission-critical technology environments to our dedicated certified engineers while they focus on their core business. We build relationships with our managed services clients on transparency and trust.
Contact us today to learn more about how managed services can keep your business technology stable and secure. If for some reason, our managed services are not a good fit, we can help point you in the right direction.
