Which IT Managed Services Will Be Your Fit?

That is a question a lot of entrepreneurs are thinking about. Given the number of telemarketing offers they get from lead generation representatives of IT firms, this can be a confusing affair indeed. But it is a necessary activity. Ever since the introduction of the Internet in business, the way sales are made and IT sales leads generated has changed rapidly. This is certainly one of the reasons why a lot of IT managed service providers have sprung up over the years. Such firms provide a variety of services that will naturally get you all confused as to which setup will fit your needs. There are just too many of them. Before you decide to coordinate with an appointment setting representative, it would be good to know what are the common IT services available in the market today:

1. Dedicated managed hosting providers - these companies provide sophisticated hosting, as well as a wide variety of IT support, services. They also provide value-added services like security, systems administration, and data management. For a price, they can give your company added flexibility in managing your data.

2. Systems integrators - these firms provide managed services only as part of a larger set of IT services being delivered. Usually, they offer one when implementing a large IT infrastructure, but they do not offer managed services as a stand-alone product. While this can be very helpful for companies that need extra support in their infrastructure, system integrators rarely have the ability to rapidly scale-up their service, as well as being more focused on customized products.

3. Internet service providers - most of these ISP’s are focused on providing managed hosting services for websites, mainly. But they can also venture into offering such a service to small and medium scale businesses, depending on the market.

4. Cloud platform providers - this can be further divided into two categories: platform-based and service-based. Platform-based cloud managed services provide their clients an infrastructure to deploy their own applications, while service-based services provide clients with a subscription for applications like web services and data storage.

5. Independent software vendors hosting providers - these are a class of service providers that provide a  number of special technical services such as: administration and troubleshooting of large-scale custom applications; software-as-a-service capabilities enabled by software virtualization; support for multi-level clients; and analysis of user data.

6. Co-location providers - this form of service is strictly of the hardware kind, offering little or no managed service capabilities, but are an essential option for firms that need a physical provider for their own IT infrastructure. Usually, co-location providers offer a secure physical space for the clients’ own servers, power and backup, an well as physical monitoring of the network. Physical maintenance and installation are also some of the services provided.

There are other services provided by IT managed services providers, but most of them are a variation of the six mentioned above. Before you become the next sales leads of an IT managed services provider, it is best that you think carefully of what kind of service you really need. You are making an investment, right.