Tips to Get the Right Mix for In-house vs Managed IT Service

Published On: 27-12-2021 06:02

In the ongoing debate of in-house vs managed service, is one approach better than the other?

Not necessarily.

Some organizations choose to make in-house investments and handle the day-to-day operations and management themselves. This is often the approach of large companies who have the budget and resources to manage everything in-house, and who can attract the talent required to manage the kind of IT infrastructure a global company will need.

Other companies choose to outsource their IT to a third-party provider. This has many benefits, especially for smaller businesses that need good quality IT infrastructure and support but do not have the budget to provide this internally.

Many other organizations take a hybrid approach to IT and use a mix of managed services and an in-house department. This strategy is becoming more popular, as organizations enjoy the best of both worlds by using internal and external teams. This option incorporates an MSP engineer along with one or two on-site engineers (tier 1 or tier 2) to keep simple tasks in-house.

An interesting point to note, though, is that a lot of MSPs (Managed Service Providers) offer resource support. That is, their team is available to offer services as in-house staff and take on client-facing responsibilities. This is one advantage of Managed Services Providers – they develop familiarity with your organization faster and integrate well with your company.

No Longer In-House vs Managed Services

Having on-site IT engineers will allow you to have an immediate response and on-site support of an in-house engineer for everyday issues. Companies around the 100+ user range take advantage of managed IT services to offer more support with an on-site entry-level team. These engineers usually do not have the knowledge on how to resolve problems with your servers and network infrastructure, though. That is where managed IT services engineers come in.

With the help of MSPs, companies can outsource the complexity, the specialization, and the costs of building applications any time a new employee has to be onboarded or an application must be deployed. You can rest assured knowing your MSP has the expertise to ensure agile onboarding, troubleshoot any errors that might arise, and effectively monitor system health to ensure uptime. Rather than tasking your in-house IT department with complex issues, let the experts in a managed service model handle them.

In order to get the best balance of in-house vs outsourced IT services, you have to examine your organization’s needs against the blend of managed and in-house services. As an MSP vendor, we have implemented both full-service solutions and worked with internal resources to take most of the workloads off them. This has given us thorough industry knowledge that we wish to share with the public. We will break down the roles of both in-house staff and Managed Service Providers, examine what each can offer your business, and discover what their limitations can be.

Control

Over time, an on-site engineer will develop an in-depth knowledge of the organization’s internal infrastructure and systems, which better equips them to be able to troubleshoot issues. However, businesses all too often become too reliant on a single on-site IT engineer who holds the “keys to the kingdom,” so to speak. All that knowledge resides with a single employee who might leave all of a sudden. It is also setting itself up for an unnecessarily difficult training process for the employee’s replacement in the event of their departure. Moreover, IT emergencies may happen during off-hours too. MSPs provide backup for an on-leave employee so you won’t lack support when your in-house engineer takes a day off.

Time

Arguably the biggest advantage of keeping your IT management on-site is the ability to have immediate support whenever needed. From routine problems to major crisis management, on-site IT staff will always deliver the shortest response time. There is a certain degree of security in knowing that if there is a technical problem of any magnitude, you can talk to an in-house IT engineer within seconds. However, you have to work with new employees to figure out what equipment is needed and then carry out the purchase and setup. The whole process may take months to properly execute. With managed service, you simply sign with the right provider who will take over from there.

Costs

While managed service seems expensive, it actually ends up being cheaper than hiring in-house. So, essentially, you’ll be paying lower for the same skill set. The salary and benefits of a single in-house IT specialist can pay for an entire managed IT package. While there are different pricing models, all of them are cheaper than building an in-house department. Utilities, office space and rent, infrastructure costs, equipment, and systems, and other costs are also taken care of by the outsourcing company if you choose to go with an MSP. MSPs also train their employees to keep them updated with the latest technologies. You’ll get the benefit of this updated knowledge without having to pay for the additional training cost.

Final Thoughts

If your organization has an in-house team, consider having a managed IT service to support you and vice versa. Having both options – the redundancy of an MSP and on-site support of in-house IT - provides a blended solution for the high-end of an exclusive in-house engineer. You will have hands-on assistance with your engineers like with exclusively in-house IT services while still giving you access to the depth of knowledge and redundancy of managed IT services.

It is safe to say that the advantages of on-site IT continue to shrink from a value perspective. Yet, it must be pointed out that not every in-house IT should be outsourced. In fact, the key to Managed IT success will be to fill the right in-house IT roles. This will likely consist of a small team of IT strategy services specialists at the architecture level who can work with business leaders to identify business goals - and find the appropriate combination of MSP technology that can help attain those ambitions. It is identical to what happens with in-house IT and SaaS providers - just on a smaller and more calculated level. So, even though some IT departments may shrink because of continued MSP acceptance, the idea that IT departments and roles will completely go extinct must never be the end goal.