Managed service Agreements

Break fix

This is completely reactive. It's like visiting the garage only when your car breaks down and not bothering with routine servicing and maintenance. You only pay when you visit the garage.

Managed Services (MSP)

This is akin to having someone manage your property on your behalf. Taking care of the monitoring, upkeep and unforeseen incidents for you, all for a flat fixed monthly fee.

Co-Managed IT

You could call this a collaborative effort; your in-house team runs the day to day activities whilst the MSP supports the backend infrastructure and handles projects or higher-level tasks for a fixed monthly fee.

Further to this, when the Break-Fix tech walks in on a job, they don’t know what they are walking into. They have little context to your issue, little background information and possibly no credentials or detailed information re your setup. So, much of their time, which you are paying for, could be spent gathering all this information before they can even begin to start working on the real problem at hand.

Plus, because there is no ongoing maintenance, who knows what other issues may be looming in the background unnoticed until they become much bigger issues or one that could affect and lengthen the current fix required. It’s not ideal, but it can work for some. It could work out cheaper, but it does come with an element of risk and depends how much you can stomach.

If you don’t mind unexpected expenditure coupled with some downtime here and there (which may be significant) then it may be the solution for you. But if you have any kind of compliance requirements and you like to keep better control of the purse strings, it could start to jar with you in time. If the thought of half a day to a day or more downtime here and there and unexpected costs is no longer acceptable to you, then maybe it’s time to think about Managed Services.

How about Managed Services (MSP)

Where Break Fix is waiting for your car to break down and be recovered from the side of the road, Managed Services is having an ongoing service plan with routine maintenance and servicing all covered for a fixed monthly fee. Including remote telemetry to allow the garage to monitor and maintain things in between any hands-on servicing.

Where Break Fix is waiting for your car to break down and be recovered from the side of the road, Managed Services is having an ongoing service plan with routine maintenance and servicing all covered for a fixed monthly fee. Including remote telemetry to allow the garage to monitor and maintain things in between any hands-on servicing.

• Monitor for issues
• Patch security flaws
• Install updates
• Document your environment
• Manage and monitor your backups
• Restore from backups should the worst occur
• Provide someone to turn to for support from a real person when things are not working as expected.
• Systems and processes to handle your support queries more efficiently.
• Tracking and documentation of each issue raised.

Lastly let's look at Co-Managed IT

A co-managed setup can work for some businesses. At Sound Networks we have worked successfully with several companies via this type of arrangement. Back to the car analogy again – sorry. Think of this like having a fleet of expensive and classic cars in a shed (or bigger) at the bottom of your garden, with a full-time caretaker looking after their needs such as washing, checking fluids, keeping batteries charged, running engines and even driving the cars from time to time. All of this helps to keep the vehicles ticking over and ready to go at a moment's notice. If more serious mechanical work is required, the vehicle goes out to a specialist.

Co-managed IT support is very similar. Your internal IT team handles all the straightforward everyday IT tasks such as user setups, password resets, printing issues and other questions from your staff. But when you need a more serious ongoing problem resolved, a major upgrade or audit or consultancy for growth or compliance… this is where your IT partner gets involved.

What’s important to clarify with this type of setup is who handles what and when, so that both parties (and the members of your team) know who to contact for what and when. Or, you may send all your initial requests to your internal team in the first instance, but they must know when to escalate these to their outsourced IT partner. (The MSP)

This type of arrangement can take some planning and time to setup, but it can work if your internal team is lacking resources or you need a safety net in case of staff sickness or unexpectedly leaving. It may be that you could be facing a period of sudden growth or an external audit, in either case, working with an external partner can help to stay on top of things.