Square One says managed services makes financial sense

Applied technology solutions specialists Square One is very concerned that organisations, faced with significant financial pressure in the current economic environment, may compromise their IT investments, staff and support systems in order to meet cost cutting targets.

Almost all major organisations are currently faced with these challenges, but realise that without technology a business can't deliver to their staff and clients effectively. Square One's managed services solutions offerings may now be just the answer they are looking for.

Most CIOs are currently in a very tricky position. They are required to reduce their costs and overheads, but understand that if they don't find an innovative solution, this will severely impact their core business and staff efficiency and security. Information and technology together provide an organisation's organisational efficiency, but also increasingly make available key market differentiators.

Square One has recently seen an increasing demand to provide both physical and virtual managed services to organisations looking to take large portions of their technology infrastructure off balance sheet and reduce their costs and head count. Traditionally, managed services clients have been motivated by the process efficiencies; however, of late, the driver has been purely economic.

Solutions that work well in a physical managed services environment include network management, network security, Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange management. On a more virtual level, remote network monitoring is a key service that no longer needs to be done in-house; as the alarms and communications systems are now so intelligent that it no longer matters where you reside physically.

Maintenance and support costs are reduced significantly through an outsourced, managed services solution. In addition, the client benefits from free consulting services as well as guaranteed times to respond, uptime in general and skills availability.

“By outsourcing some or all of your IT requirements, the levels of required resources can be adapted quickly to fill the gaps due to staff leaving, new projects being implemented, or economic downturn without large additional costs to the client,” says Gary Philp of Square One Technology Solutions. “Over and above this, outsourcing gives our clients access to an unparalleled resource pool of engineers skilled in various areas and competencies that they wouldn't otherwise have access to.”