Managed IT Services Auburn

Choosing the right managed IT services partner in Auburn

With the right managed IT services partner on your side, you can say goodbye to the pain of having to deal with the regular care and maintenance of your essential IT infrastructure. Here are some tips on how to choose the right managed IT services partner in Auburn.

Be clear on what managed IT services actually means

Managed IT services vendors take care of regular care and maintenance tasks. That is all they do. Anything else is passed across either to a client’s in-house IT team, or to another vendor, usually an IT support vendor. Many managed IT services providers also offer IT support services (and some offer quite a wide range of alternative services), but these are extra services and are charged accordingly. It’s important to keep this in mind, so that you have reasonable expectations and understand what your managed IT services budget will actually buy you.

Look at where you are now and where you want to be in the future

As managed IT services vendors only deal with care-and-maintenance tasks, they will insist that any pre-existing issues are resolved before they take over a system. In fact they may require it to be upgraded to meet their minimum standards. Similarly, they will expect you to organize your own projects and to deal with your own break/fix work.

With that in mind, it can be helpful to see what you can do to improve your systems in advance of looking for a managed IT services partner as this will give you a more accurate baseline of what improvements come about as a result of managed IT services making sure that your IT infrastructure is properly maintained versus what improvements come about as a result of upgrades to the infrastructure itself.

Clearly define your needs, wants and budget

This is a must for any hiring or purchase decision, but it arguably has particular relevance for managed IT services. The key point to note is that the move to any managed IT services partner is going to involve some short-term pain in the form of the work and expense of a migration. Over time, this will turn into a net gain, but only if you stay with the same managed IT services partner for an extended period. Otherwise, you will be repeating the exercise and expense in short order.

You therefore want to do everything possible to get meaningful feedback from all relevant stakeholders and to keep working internally to reach a point where everyone is in agreement about your needs and wants (and is clear about which is which and the priority of the latter). Ideally, you would like at least a broad outline of where you will be headed over the next five years (or more if possible) and what that will mean for your IT infrastructure and hence your IT budget.

Request IT Services

The more accurately you can plan out your project work, the more accurately you can budget for it and the more accurately you can inform a potential managed IT services vendor of your likely future requirements. Break/fix work, however, is reactive, hence it’s more of a challenge to determine how much money to set aside for it.

One way to address this is to take out a cyber insurance policy, in which case you will again need to know what you want so you can price it accurately and know how much to set aside for the excess. You might want to check if a potential managed IT services vendor also has an IT support team that offers cyberinsurance and if not if they have any experience with supporting it or if they are at least open to doing so.

Keep the law (and compliance programs) in mind at all times

This may seem like stating the obvious but it’s important enough to be worth highlighting. You are responsible for your data, particularly any sensitive personal data with which you are entrusted. This includes the personal data of your own employees. You are expected to ensure that any vendors you use are carefully vetted and appropriately supervised.

Vetting and supervising vendors is a whole lot easier when they are located close to you. This means that if you need managed IT services in Auburn, it’s a very good idea to look for a managed IT services partner in Auburn, or at least in the Auburn area, as opposed to a managed IT services partner which offers services in Auburn, but is actually located elsewhere.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced managed IT services partner in Auburn, please click here now to speak to Salient IT.

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