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CompTIA Research Study Highlights Benefits to Using Managed Services
Benefits can help meet Compliance Requirements
March 2008
Key industries including financial and healthcare services face the issue of solving IT and productivity problems by maintaining compliance requirements, and utilizing managed service providers (MSPs) can help reduce costs and boost productivity. However, industries are hesitant to turn to managed services because they find it difficult to justify the investment.
Based on its industry research, CompTIA defines managed services as the ongoing management, monitoring, and maintenance of networks, software, hardware, and related IT services by an external organization.
Some of the main benefits highlighted in the January 2008 CompTIA research study "Making the Case for Managed Services: The Business Impact of IT Problems at SMBs" include cost-efficiency and minimizing productivity-loss.
Reports have highlighted cost reduction as one of the main benefits of managed services. The CompTIA study revealed that small and medium-sized business (SMBs) suffer real and costly business impacts from spyware infections, network downtime, and other common IT problems. For an average SMB, spyware infections and network downtime combined can cost approximately $13,000 per year.
IT professionals reported in "Making the Case for Managed Services" that they put up with their spyware problem for 18 work hours before getting it repaired. The average infected user reported that their spyware infection cut their work productivity between 21 percent and 32 percent (these numbers varied significantly by industry and job role).
The study also found that using managed services for network/server monitoring was found to reduce network downtime costs (repair and end-user) by about 50 percent on average, because of shorter repair times and downtime.
Productivity is greatly affected when there is in increase in downtime. The average end-user reported that network downtime reduces their work productivity anywhere between 49 to 69 percent depending on the length of downtime. However, remote monitoring services were found to greatly decrease network downtime. The average network-down incident was almost 50 percent shorter when the affected device/server was covered by a remote monitoring managed service.
CGI Group Inc. assembled a white paper discussing the value of managed services in the banking industry. According to the white paper, “Managed Services for Credit Solutions: Driving Business Value in Banking,” utilizing an MSP introduces best practices into the organization, and MSPs can offer improved service levels. This also allows staff to put their focus on the priorities of the organization.
ecfirst, an IT services company serving the healthcare and financial industries, put together the Managed Services Compliance Program targeting the healthcare industry. According to their program outline, using an MSP can minimize productivity losses from unexpected downtime, and can provide in-depth resource capabilities.
Making use of managed services can greatly benefit an organization, no matter what industry. MSPs can target problems and issues and create a way for end-users to bring their organization up to compliance and prevent problems before they start affecting productivity or cutting into their revenue.
For more information about this study or to find the value of managed services, please visit www.focusonmsp.com. FocusOnMSP.com provides MSPs with a trusted resource to access the latest information and tools needed to run a successful business. It also educates end-users about the benefits of implementing managed services . Visit the site to get access to research, articles, an MSP directory as well as other helpful resources.
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