Outsourcing has turned into a major trend in HR over the previous decade. An ever-increasing number of companies, large and small, are swinging to outsourcing as an approach to developing while limiting finance and overhead expenses. The same has happened with IT manpower also. Companies, whether big or small has been choosing to outsource their IT infrastructure maintenance and support services to professional IT support companies rather than deploying dedicated IT person or team for their business. The number one benefit of depending upon a professional IT support company for your IT infrastructure than hiring dedicted IT team for your business is financial – you dont have to invest in 2 or 3 people – or even 1 – to make sure your IT infrastructure is right. Whether your desktop PC or printer want service or you need to maintain your server infrastructure, you can make sure it is done at a fraction of amount you would pay to a well qualified IT person.
When it comes to outsourced server management, the number one problem is server management companies are a dime a dozen, and everyone seems to promise the Earth for dirt cheap prices. You might make contract with a company that boasts everything for a cheap price, and eventually fail you. Or you might hire an expensive managed IT company and later find that they don’t provide the value for money. How do you tackle this problem? Well, here are some check points you might want to consider before hiring a Server Management Company for your business:
First thing you need to look for in a server management company is whether they have demonstrated knowledge in your specific industry and technology. It can be blog posts relevant to your industry/technology, or testimonials from companies like you, or even in the way they explain things to you during sales talks. For example, an experienced company will be able to explain the important challenges and its solutions even without you having to explain it to them. They will give you specific measures & effort required to maintain your servers; in a simple language without tech jargon.
Also, look at the basic qualification of the server admins. Are they technology graduates, or just amateur enthusiasts? Sure, there are a lot of brilliant sysadmins out there who doesn’t have a formal degree, but when you engage a remote admin company, you just don’t know what the tech is capable of. A graduation certificate in technology is an efficient filter to weed out techs with superficial knowledge.
New companies crop up all the time advertising cheap support and world class facilities. But more often than not (at least in server admin business), these companies close down within a year or so because of unmanageable costs, staff churn or management challenges. Unstable companies have overworked or under qualified sysadmins who either won’t notice server issues in time, or takes days to actually resolve even an urgent problem.
When considering a company for your server management, look at how long the company was active in your industry. The longer a company has been in the industry, the greater they have invested in the business – and by extension a lot more they have to lose with a poor service feedback.
Nothing speaks louder than an endorsement from an existing customer, because only a truly delighted customer would take time to answer a reference from another business. So, when considering a support provider, ask them: Can you provide a reference to one of your customers?
Many companies use clever sentences to highlight what they deliver, but not mention what they don’t. Your server management company should be able to take care of everything that’s needed to keep your server online, fast and secure. This should include 24/7 monitoring, human alert verification, quick failed service recovery, server optimization, server hardening, backups, disaster recovery, and more.
Many companies feel unsure about engaging a server support company because they don’t know how they can hold the provider liable should they not deliver on their contract.
That’s why it’s important to have a legally bound agreement with a provider that has valid office near to your business. Also you need to make sure your service provider respond to the issues you report at the earliest – preferably within 10 minutes. For that you have to consider a company who has physical address near to yours. For example, Comfort IT Solutions has its office located in the heart of Doha, enabling it to provide fast IT support for its customers all over Qatar.
Conclusion: Choosing a server management company ideal for your business can be daunting. Today we’ve seen where you can go wrong in choosing a company, and what to look for to avoid the common pitfalls. If you have any questions, we’d be happy to talk to you.
When it comes to outsourced server management, the number one problem is server management companies are a dime a dozen, and everyone seems to promise
No two businesses are the same – which means that no two ERP solutions should be either. Every business work in their own unique way,
