Many organizations benefit from outsourcing IT, but not all organizations use IT service partners in the same way. Some organizations pursue full outsourcing while others outsource very specifically to compliment in-house resources.
Even a single organization’s use of outsourcing will evolve and change over time as the organization progresses. After all, the requirements of a four-person law firm will be radically different from the needs of a 200-person firm with eight offices spread across several states.
No matter how it is used, outsourcing represents a flexible rental of expertise that would otherwise be unavailable or a waste of internal resources.
Organizations should incorporate outsourcing options into their annual or quarterly review of their IT strategy to ensure they hit their goals in a timely, cost-effective manner.
Full Outsourcing
Small companies generally do not have the consistent and regular IT needs to justify a full-time IT staff, so they outsource their IT entirely by default.
As they grow, they may find themselves developing a constant need for IT services and must evaluate if they want to hire their own IT staff or continue outsourcing.
For example, a chain of auto-repair shops might be able to afford an in-house IT team. However, no matter how great their IT members may be, they would be unlikely to gain a competitive advantage in fixing cars.
Hiring a full-time team also brings additional challenges, because many managers may be unable to judge the quality of potential IT hires.
Partial Outsourcing
Larger companies that invest in a dedicated staff find it challenging to retain expert talent for every need of the organization.
It is incredibly expensive to hire cloud experts, network experts, and security experts unless your business is to provide IT services.
In-house IT team members become specialists in the needs of the organization, but often cannot match the depth and variety of expertise available through outsourcing.
IT managers often turn to outsourcing for specific projects or events when the need for such skill becomes necessary.
For example, a three-facility hospital network may have an in-house IT team, but when they decide to move email and file sharing to the cloud, they may not have the budget to train or hire a cloud expert.
However, they could easily outsource expert help with both the initial transfer and continued maintenance and security of the cloud assets.
Partial outsourcing can be done in many ways. In the example above, the partial outsourcing is both on a project basis and a function basis.
Project outsourcing involves hiring an expert to complete a specific project such as creating a new network, migrating to the cloud, building a new server, or even recovering from a ransomware attack.
Functional outsourcing consists of assigning a portion of the IT role to an outside partner, such as security monitoring, cloud resources, or even just patching and updating.
Flexible Options
At its core, what outsourcing truly delivers is flexibility.
Outsourcing IT services provides companies a way to increase resources rapidly when they need them, and downsize just as quickly when they don’t.
This flexibility allows a company to maintain 24/7/365 cybersecurity monitoring or customer service options, even when many of those hours or nights have little to no activity.
Using an IT outsourcing partner can help government agencies retain an incident response team, or a non-profit to maintain cloud expertise without hiring expensive IT staff members.
Did the company experience a big drop in sales? With outsourcing, there are no layoffs and the services can be easily adjusted to the size of current needs.
Does the firm need a penetration test to adhere to a compliance audit? IT firms get hired all the time to provide one-off services that internal IT teams would struggle to complete in addition to their regular workloads.
Ideal Integrations and Blue Bastion provide outsourced expertise and flexibility for many different clients in a variety of ways. We can accommodate a wide range of long term and short-term needs over a full spectrum of IT and security requirements.
Call us today at 412-349-6680, or fill out the form below, and together we can explore what options may best fit your organization’s needs.