The reason managed services in the IT sector are growing is because information technology has become central to the functioning of all sizes of businesses, says Chris Welham, executive director of Space Age Technologies.
Welham defines managed services as the outsourcing of a company or organisation's IT functions to another party, rather than doing it on its own.
Stellenbosch-based Space Age Technologies is a service provider that, over the past decade, has made a business case out of providing managed services to small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). It provides IT services to small companies that have 10 to 50 users and mid-size organisations that range up to 250 IT users.
“IT has become central to the functioning of all sorts of businesses. In the past, if a PC went down or the network was not functioning properly, it was not a real issue for the functioning of the company. It could carry on as usual. However, now it is a very different situation in that IT has become central to running a company of virtually any size,” Welham says.
Just how important IT is to SMEs has been a raging debate within the industry for some time. However, the increase in infrastructure connectivity, the special promotions aimed at this segment by IT vendors, and the fact that a new management generation is emerging -which has grown up with technology - is changing it.
Welham says SMEs very often find themselves caught in a situation where they are too big for the CEO or owner to fix an IT problem, but too small to justify a dedicated IT support department.
Also, the complexity of IT systems means the traditional method of something breaking and then fixing it doesn't work anymore. Welham says managed services at least provide a proactive approach to maintaining the uptime of a network or service. This means the network is actively monitored and alarms are sounded before something goes down.
“Traditionally, the cost of a company's IT was measured by when something broke and the cost to fix it. Now, that cost is becoming translated into the business value lost to the company,” Welham says.
New technologies will also affect the way business is done and how information is managed.
“We also have to consider how computing in the cloud will affect managed services, now that a company's data can be stored and managed by entities such as Google, or whomever, out there somewhere. Small and medium-size companies have to cope with that,” he says.
Welham notes that Space Age Technologies' solution to this issue is 'the virtual CIO', whereby Space Age assumes the role of a CIO for a company that would normally not be large enough to have such a dedicated professional.
“Often, in a small or medium-size company, it is the CEO or the CFO who assumes the role of CIO. However, they are not necessarily professionals, so this service helps them decide on hardware purchases, software installation and troubleshooting of their networks,” he explains.
Share