Managed IT Services Placerville

How to choose a managed IT services partner in Placerville

Managed IT services can do a lot to lighten the heavy burden on SMBs. It is, however, really important to pick the right managed IT services partner for your organization. With that in mind, here is some guidance on how to choose a managed IT services partner in Placerville.

Double-check any applicable laws/compliance issues

Obviously, you should be in compliance with the law already, but laws can and do change, both with place and time, so it makes sense to double-check not only what applies at the moment, but what looks like it could be coming up soon. In simple terms, when you hire a managed IT services vendor, you generally want it to be a long-term partnership (in fact as long as possible), so it makes sense to check that any potential partner is ready to accommodate likely changes in the law/compliance programs.

Be aware that location can be very significant

The internet is both very global and very local. It’s global because any service which can be performed remotely can be performed anywhere in the world (that there is a suitable internet connection). It’s local because local governments are increasingly taking a very strong interest in what happens with their citizens’ personal data and are placing restrictions on what can be done with it, along with strong penalties for breaking their rules.

The EU’s GDPR laws are probably the ultimate example of this, at least for the present, but they are likely to be just an indicator of what is to come across the board. This means that any company which holds any sort of sensitive data (including the personal data of their own employees) is likely to face increasing restrictions on what they can do with that data, especially with regard to transporting it across borders, and will also be expected to supervise their vendor-partners very carefully to ensure that they meet all relevant requirements.

This means that you need to be very aware that companies may offer managed IT services in Placerville without being located in Placerville or even anywhere near Placerville. You therefore need to double-check their actual legal and physical base(s) to have a realistic idea of how easy it would be for you to supervise them or to bring legal action against them.

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Remember to account for break/fix work when setting your budget

Arguably the single, most important step in any hiring decision is deciding your needs, wants and budget. It really is worth taking the time to get input from all relevant stakeholders and doing everything possible to get everyone on the same page before you proceed.

As a minimum, try to get consensus about what is actually a need and what is a want and prioritized the latter. This will allow you to determine how much budget you must allocate to your managed IT services and allow you to start the process of determining what else, if anything, you can afford.

During this process, it’s imperative to remember that managed IT services vendors only deal with regular care-and-maintenance tasks. Any other work needs to be performed either by an in-house IT team or by another vendor, usually IT support. Projects can and should be planned and budgeted in advance but break/fix work is reactive, hence it is harder to know how much money you’ll need to allocate for it.

One way to deal with this issue is to have cyberinsurance with sinking funds to cover the excess. You may even be able to get this from your managed IT services vendor as there is a good chance that they will also have an in-house IT support team. This can be both very convenient and very cost-effective, just remember that it will come at an extra cost.

Think about whether you want a generalist or specialists
The managed IT services sector is now such a huge industry that it not only has niches, it has niches of niches. The most obvious niche is managed IT security, but this has further niches such as managed cloud security and managed endpoint security. For many SMBs, using a generalist will be the way to go, not just for convenience and cost-effectiveness (making yourself a more valuable customer) but also so that your chosen managed IT services vendor gets maximum insight into your business, which they can then use to help you to develop it.

You do, however, have the option of using specialists, even if only in certain areas, for example, if you’re really concerned about EDR security and want it to be given particularly focused attention.

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

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