A qualified managed services provider minimizes the risk of downtime through ongoing monitoring, proactive maintenance and rapid troubleshooting of issues.
Severe IT outages are increasingly rare, thanks to more reliable IT equipment and investments in backup and disaster recovery systems. Nevertheless, in-house IT teams continue to struggle with unplanned outages.
A recent study from New Relic found that IT teams spend almost a third of their time addressing downtime and disruptions. The primary causes of these unplanned outages include network failures, problems with third-party services and human error. The costs of these outages add up, even if they impact only a few users. Employees are unable to access the tools they need to do their jobs, and IT teams must dedicate time to identifying, troubleshooting and fixing the problem.
Managed services can help reduce the frequency, cost and impact of unplanned IT outages. Managed services providers (MSPs) use advanced tools to monitor the IT environment and perform proactive maintenance, minimizing the risk of downtime. MSPs also have a team of experienced engineers and technicians who can rapidly troubleshoot problems and get systems back up and running.
The Challenge of Resolving IT Outages
IT outages are time-consuming and disruptive because there’s seldom a straightforward, obvious cause. The IT services users rely on typically involve an array of third-party applications and cloud platforms. As users start calling the help desk to report problems, IT teams may scramble to determine if the issue lies with the in-house IT environment or a third-party service.
The recent CrowdStrike outage serves as a good example. On July 19, 2024, a faulty update in CrowdStrike’s Falcon software caused millions of Windows systems to crash. Initially, IT teams had no way of knowing that was the problem, and they scrambled to find ways to get systems back up and running. They understood that their organizations were losing millions of dollars a minute and were focused on finding workarounds.
Why ‘Low-Impact’ Outages Are a Big Problem
Thankfully, outages of that magnitude don’t happen that often. However, so-called “low impact” outages happen every day. The New Relic survey found that organizations had a median of 232 outages and disruptions every year. More than half had low-impact outages every week.
The New Relic study found that human error is the root cause of many of these disruptions. Human error-related disruptions are often the result of staff not following procedures, incorrect procedures and installation problems. Errors are more likely among overstretched IT teams.
Lack of visibility into the IT environment compounds these problems and makes it more difficult to troubleshoot and resolve issues. IT teams often use multiple monitoring tools that aren’t well integrated, leading to an overabundance of alerts and false positives. Because alerts aren’t correlated and prioritized, IT teams have difficulty pinpointing the root cause of problems. Handling low-impact disruptions becomes a time-consuming resource drain.
How Managed Services Can Help
Managed services can help speed the resolution of IT outages, minimizing the effort of in-house IT teams and reducing the overall impact on the business. Qualified managed services providers (MSPs) have invested in advanced monitoring and management tools that enable them to identify and resolve problems quickly. MSPs also have a deep bench of engineers who have seen many problems before. They have expertise across a wide range of IT disciplines and stay abreast of known problems and threats.
Additionally, MSPs take steps to reduce the frequency of disruptions by performing day-to-day administrative tasks and proactive maintenance. They also minimize the risk of human error with documented procedures and well-defined methodologies.
Qualified MSPs have made the investments in tools and expertise to help organizations gain a more stable IT environment with minimal disruptions. The MSP’s team will take the time to understand the issues that have the greatest impact on operations and develop a customized plan that aligns with business processes and needs. Together, these services help reduce the frequency, cost and impact of IT outages so in-house can focus on running the business.
