Partner Article

Partnership approach to IT pays off

Every business wants to do more with less, and partner-led models such as managed services and outsourcing are an ideal way to squeeze IT budgets while maintaining a flexible, responsive and resilient infrastructure.

In our work delivering IT strategic consultancy, services and support we see many organisations who are confused about the differences between outsourcing and managed services, and unsure about taking the right route.

Whichever way you label it, both options involve working with an IT partner who handles some, or all, of your needs. This can range from strategy through to day to day support and cover everything from the infrastructure through to end user applications, with each model tailored to the client’s individual needs.

IT analysts Gartner say that around 50% of organisations plan to increase their use of partner-provided services, driven by a need to reduce costs, increase reliability of networks and applications, quickly and easily integrate new technologies, and reduce pressure on in-house teams.

Managed services typically involves monitoring the IT infrastructure and its performance, anticipating and solving problems, making recommendations for improvement and ensuring the IT delivers best value alongside changing business needs. Outsourcing goes a stage further, with the client giving IT responsibility to a partner. Our approach is to place an IT manager on site to act as a bridge between the client and our support team. The client gets on with running the business while we run the IT, working as a business partner at board level and helping to define and deliver the strategy, using IT to facilitate business goals.

We start by structuring the support model around what our client wants to achieve, and what internal IT resource they have. We then deliver services from our ITPS help desk, or base staff on site as and when needed, and work alongside any existing IT staff, or act as an in-house team.

Whichever model our clients choose, they remain firmly in the driving seat.

One company that has been quick to recognise the benefits of managed services is nationally based construction and property consultancy Summers Inman, which services a national and international client base from its seven offices across the UK, plus a base in Qatar.

Summers Inman was one of our first clients back in 2000 when we set up ITPS. The business has just signed up for a new seven-year contract with us and was one of the first clients to move its IT to our new £4m data centre in County Durham, benefitting from faster communications and strengthened resilience.

Through our status as one of only 10 strategic partners to Virgin Media Business, we were able to provide a 100Mb connection from remote sites plus a 1GB link to Summers Inman’s head office. The result was a network that is five times faster than its predecessor, implemented at no extra cost and which provides high speed communications vital for 3D modelling and other data-heavy systems and software. After consultation with the board we also switched Summers Inman to a data centre based virtualised server estate, which load balances the data from head office and outlying sites and backs up directly to two of our ISO27001-certified data centres, supporting the company’s business continuity strategy.

Summers Inman’s Director responsible for ICT Ian Griffiths explains what attracted the business to a managed services model: ’For several years we managed our IT in-house but as the business grew and the world of IT became more complex we took the decision to switch to working with an expert partner who could demonstrate high level expertise, a broad span of experience, and who could bring new ideas to the table.

We found those qualities and others in ITPS, and the resulting managed services model, which is tailored around our requirements, is a very cost-effective way of keeping up to date with advances in technology and making sure our IT supports the changing needs of the business.

We benefit from a combination of on-site staff who handle day to day needs, and who are supported by an expert team of IT strategists who help us to constantly refine our IT roadmap, in a model that delivers flexibility and predictable costs.

We have a strong and long-standing relationship based on mutual trust. ITPS look after our IT while we look after our business.’

If you have avoided partner models thinking that they are only suitable for outsourcing complex IT projects or involve handing over control, you could be missing out on the chance to cut costs, increase efficiency and benefit from the latest technologies.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by ITPS Ltd .