What Are Managed Network Services and Why Do Businesses Need Them?

The base salary for an IT professional is nearly $100,000. If your business chooses to handle all its IT solutions in-house, you’ll need several of those employees working full-time to do the job effectively. If you want the job done right, at least a few will need to be hired at a rate significantly above base pay. Many businesses are turning to managed services to handle their IT needs.

Managed network services, a crucial component of managed services, are specifically focused on network management and maintenance. These services are gaining popularity due to their importance in business operations and the cost savings they offer compared to in-house management.

Understanding Managed Network Services

Managed network services (MNS) refers to outsourcing IT network management to a third-party company. These providers may offer other IT management services as well. The MNS portion of the service includes network monitoring, management, and maintenance services. The contracted company will also stay on top of security and compliance issues.

Managed Network Services vs. Traditional Network Services

By opting for a Managed Services Provider (MSP) for network management, businesses not only save money on IT costs but also gain access to specialized expertise. With traditional network services, a business must hire IT staff and manage its infrastructure in-house. 

This puts extra strain on management by creating a new team they must oversee. It puts pressure on finances, too, as that team needs to be paid for full-time work. Managed Network Services solve this problem by providing companies with just the labor they need and outsourcing the responsibility for that labor.

Managed Network Services Model

When a company hires a managed network services provider, the MSP will take over responsibility for the infrastructure. This model typically comes in the form of a subscription service. Companies pay a monthly fee in exchange for the network’s day-to-day operations. The MSP will handle all management and maintenance tasks required to keep the system performing securely and efficiently. This single, affordable monthly fee replaces all the headaches of managing an in-house IT team.

Benefits of Managed Network Services

We’ve seen how managed network services allow a business to save time and money. Now let’s look at how the services provided will enable a company to thrive.

Focus on Core Business

When you start a business, you aren’t creating it to manage IT infrastructure. You’re starting it to provide your customers with a specific product or service. As the business grows, the support staff required to provide that product or service grows with it, often including roles unrelated to the business’s primary focus. Managing these additional roles can be time-consuming and distracting for upper management. 

Enhanced Security

We live in a world of ever-increasing cybersecurity threats as attackers are becoming more sophisticated. With all their financial resources, even the world’s largest companies are susceptible to these threats. These companies have had trade secrets leaked, put customer data at risk, and taken a hit on their reputation. 

Related: Why Your Business Needs an MSP: 5 Key Benefits

While the most significant companies can weather the storm, most businesses will struggle to recover from such a breach. The importance of having a team of experts matching the skill and sophistication of would-be attackers can’t be overstated. 

The staff securing your network needs to be the best of the best. Otherwise, your business could suffer a data breach that puts both your customers and your company at risk. By outsourcing this responsibility to a company whose core competency is network management and security, you can relieve yourself of that distraction. You can spend more time and money on what your customers are paying you for.

Improved Network Reliability and Uptime.

Security isn’t the only concern when managing a network, of course. Businesses increasingly rely on cloud services—even those who don’t rely on devices within the company to connect to one another. When something goes wrong and those devices can’t communicate how they need to, productivity can come to a halt. Employees can no longer access important files, customers can’t access your website or complete the actions they want to, and your entire communications infrastructure may go down with the network. 

In other words, network downtime is a big deal. Keeping it up requires sophisticated monitoring tools that can alert IT staff to the problem—and a team of experts who can quickly resolve the issue. Again, we see the importance of having the best in managing your infrastructure. An MNS provider is well qualified to know what that entails, hire the best people, and provide them with the best tools. 

Scalability

Your business needs are dynamic: as your company grows, it stands to reason that your network needs will grow with it. But that isn’t all of the equation. There may be times of heavy usage when you need more capacity and times of reduced capacity when you need less. When hiring your own IT staff, you can’t add and remove team members as frequently as your needs may change. 

The scalability of staff is a substantial cost factor, but the scalability of the infrastructure matters as well. Creating a network that can scale quickly when demand increases requires skill and planning. Without a properly configured system, you could end up with a network that goes down right when you need it the most.

Not only are managed network services easy to scale up and down by altering your plan, but the experts who work for them can help ensure that your infrastructure is optimized for scalability. Once again, you benefit from their expertise in choosing and setting up tools and managing the network.

Cost Savings

Nearly every benefit mentioned above translates into cost savings as well. Two costs are associated with maintaining an in-house IT department for network infrastructure: staff and tools. Hiring an expert staff to take on this critical role is expensive in its own right, but they can only adequately perform their job if they are supplied with the latest tools and technologies. An additional expense you may find yourself with is the cost of ongoing training. The networking landscape moves quickly, and you’ll want your staff to remain on top of those changes.

Hiring a managed services provider enables you to bundle everything into an affordable package. You’ll get a fixed monthly fee that’s easier to budget for than the often unpredictable world of network management otherwise would be. Along with those lower management costs, you’ll gain additional cost savings by reducing downtime and the associated loss of productivity.

Features of Managed Network Services

When you sign up with a managed services provider, you’ll get access to several critical network management and maintenance features.

Network Monitoring

Networks are busy. At any given time, important data could be flowing through them. Data that can seriously impede business processes if it doesn’t arrive. Yet, networks aren’t infallible. Sometimes they go down. To minimize the impact of lost data, they need to be monitored constantly. While plenty of advanced tools can automate that process, you’ll need access to those tools. Importantly, you’ll also need access to someone who can be alerted and intervene when there’s a problem. This makes monitoring one of the most essential features of managed network services.

MSPs use a range of tools and technologies to monitor networks. With a mixture of software and hardware, the MSP can have a real-time view of all the networks under their care. In addition to these tools, MSPs have highly skilled professionals capable of spotting potential problems early on and stopping them before they become an issue. 

Network Management

Network management includes day-to-day tasks such as configuration, optimization, monitoring, and troubleshooting. In addition to required daily tasks, network management addresses what happens after a problem is detected and one-off tasks such as configuring new devices or software.

Just as identifying the problems requires great skill, so does addressing them. The staff at an MNS provider spends all day every day working with networks from a variety of customers. This gives them insight and experience that even the best employees can’t gain from working at a single location. Their breadth of experience ensures a more efficiently managed network and smoother day-to-day operations.

Network Maintenance

Daily monitoring keeps a network healthy, but regular maintenance is also needed. Software companies release patches that must be promptly installed as bugs are identified and squashed. Sometimes, hardware fails and needs to be replaced. Other times, it’s simply too outdated to perform the job at a modern standard. All of this ongoing upkeep requires someone to stay on top of the necessary changes and implement them when needed. Otherwise, a once secure and reliable network will become more of a liability than an asset. 

Thankfully, maintenance is one of the standard features managed network service providers offer. Their team of experts will handle all the hardware and software upgrades your system needs and perform any routine maintenance tasks required. 

Network Security

A lack of adequately applied software patches can cause much more than an unreliable network. Many of these patches are designed to fix security holes. Worse, every would-be cyber criminal knows about the exploit once the patch is released. If you don’t apply the patches quickly, your systems become a haven for every cyber attacker wishing to harm you. Should they succeed, your sensitive data, or that of your customers, could be made public.

Related: How MSPs Can Help Businesses Optimize Their Cloud Strategy

A well-managed network service provider will do much more than apply patches when they come due. They’ll monitor the latest cybersecurity news and understand threats as soon as they’re known. This allows them to proactively take steps to keep your networks more secure and keep your data away from prying eyes that shouldn’t have access to it.

Choosing the Right Managed Network Services Provider

Not all managed network service providers are created equal. Even among top-tier providers, you want to find one that fits your specific needs and goals well. Finding the right provider comes down to knowing what to look for and what questions to ask.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Managed Network Services Provider

• Expertise and Experience – One of the benefits is that MSPs have highly skilled IT staff that would be difficult to hire. This advantage goes away if their staff still needs those qualifications. 
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – Before signing an agreement with any provider, you should understand the terms you’re getting into. This is especially true for something as important as network management.
• Security Measures – Given the threat cyber attacks pose, it’s essential to understand what plans are in place for avoiding them and how to handle the situation should one occur.
• Cost – Most providers will have a simple monthly fee. Regardless of the pricing structure, it’s essential to understand what you’ll be paying and what you’ll be getting for that price.

Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Managed Network Services Provider

To properly evaluate the factors above, you need to know where each provider you’re considering stands on them. As we’ve seen, the MNS provider you choose will have severe ramifications on the health of your business. Understanding how each candidate aligns with your business, its needs, and its goals is essential. Below are some questions to help you evaluate their alignment with your needs and capacity to do the job.

1. What specific managed services do you offer?
2. What experience do you have working with businesses in my industry?
3. What is your average response time for resolving issues?
4. What are the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) you offer?
5. What is your pricing structure, and how is it determined?
6. What security measures do you have in place to protect my data?
7. Can you provide references from current or past clients?
8. How do you handle backups and disaster recovery?
9. Do you offer 24/7 support?
10. What is your process for onboarding new clients?

Let BCM One Manage Your Network

BCM One provides several networking solutions and a team of experts who really know their stuff. This makes us uniquely qualified to handle the pain points that your business is having. We can assess your current situation, make recommendations for the services you need, and provide those services with a team of industry aspects that know every part of building and maintaining efficient and secure networks. To learn more, contact us today.