With a limited budget, it can be hard for the average SMB – small medium business – to create a good networking infrastructure. However, outsourcing IT is often seen as the more expensive option than doing it yourself. Often times, it might be compelling to create your own network environment from in-house knowledge and hardware. This is often better in theory than in practice however.
Creating infrastructure for the future is quite a complex project, which requires a lot of planning and forethought. A managed service provider has the experience and connections to provide reliable and well-priced hardware, with the knowledge to install it properly and keep it running.
Problems With Not Outsourcing IT
It is understandable why SMBs opt to go the DIY route. Smaller organizations bear a much bigger burden maintaining their IT budgets than the bigger corporations. In fact, SMBs spend almost $1,500 more per employee on their IT spending.
This is because sourcing equipment is actually quite hard, and unless you have built up a relationship with a supplier in the past, the gear will be sold at a markup. In addition to this, inconsistencies, incompatibilities, and reduction in ability to scale will come as a result of performing your own work.
Hardware Sourcing
As mentioned, hardware sourcing quickly becomes the initial hurdle for the DIY SMB. Creating a comprehensive list of hardware for a server is itself a challenging task. Every piece must fit like a puzzle to achieve the task that your business requires. It needs to be a finely tuned machine.
Everything from the motherboard, CPU, disk drives and array type, redundant power supplies, networking topology, and more needs to be considered.
Once the required hardware has been determined, buying it can easily become a very expensive ordeal. Business grade equipment is expensive, especially if you are buying it without vendor relations, or experience.
There is also the matter of squeezing the most out of your hardware. An MSP – managed service provider – can employ virtualization and cloud computing to reduce costs and increase performance and optimization.
When everything is added together, the average SMB saves 25% to 50% on their IT spending by teaming with an MSP. It’s much better to go together than alone, especially for the long-haul.
Productivity Loss
Losing out on working hours is a big downside to a DIY technology solution. There will always be more issues in a DIY network. Old and incompatible hardware causes a lot of glitches, especially during software upgrades and other changes.
In addition, these architectures are a lot more rigid, less able to scale into the future, less able to be secured and locked down. They are the most prone to cyber-attack and what about disaster recovery? Is there a backup, is it reliable? These are all serious issues that often aren’t addressed in a DIY solution.
Therefore, when problems do happen – and they will, the fix is often times a workaround solution, takes longer, and is often unreliable. This is a problem when it directly impacts the working time of your employees.
In fact, having an MSP around to help directly impacts the revenues of the SMB. On average, according to a post by MSP blog ITCompanies, SMBs are able to achieve up to a 25% increase in revenue with an MSP versus without.
Don’t Go IT Alone, Better Outsourcing IT
With any DIY setup, the issues begin to mount more and more as time goes on. Eventually, the system becomes so unstable and inflexible that the entire thing needs to be redone. This means even more wasted time and money.
Therefore, we urge you not to get too deep into the DIY. Take control by outsourcing IT, get the help of an MSP who has done it before.
With the expert assistance of an MSP, you can get your IT infrastructure to the optimal standard it should be at. Don’t go it alone, you will thank yourself later for the quality of life and assurance.
LiveLinx has been in the IT industry for decades, and we are ready to work with you to produce serious results. Contact us today for a free consultation.