4 Benefits to Infrastructure Outsourcing

If your business is running into constant tech problems, you may be looking into the advantages of infrastructure outsourcing. IT infrastructure outsourcing benefits include cost efficiency, knowledgeable staff, and easy scalability among many others. In this article, we will review a few reasons why you should outsource your IT infrastructure, as well as some disadvantages to be aware of.

Infrastructure Outsourcing: Advantages and Disadvantages

IT infrastructure outsourcing is the offloading of some or all of your IT services to an external company. Business owners take advantage of IT outsourcing because it is a cost-efficient way to get long term, 24/7 IT support. The market for IT outsourcing has been growing, projected to reach $354.8 billion in 2026.

Outsourced IT service takes the guesswork out of hiring IT staff. You are not in the business of IT. What do you know about hiring and training IT staff? Outsourcing your IT services means spending time focusing on your core business.

Data: Clutch

Depending on the size of your business, you may be looking at outsourced IT service for different reasons. This is because firm size often determines what kind of in-house IT services a business can afford. 

Without outsourcing IT services, this is what businesses may be faced with:

• Small businesses – Typically can’t afford an IT professional. Assign IT tasks to the most knowledgeable employee.
• Medium businesses – Typically have one IT professional. Scope of services limited to the capacity of one person.
• Large businesses – Typically have an in-house team of IT professionals. Services may be limited by business hours.

Despite these differences, IT outsourcing can be useful for any size business environment. Small businesses can gain competencies that they wouldn’t be able to afford in an employee. Medium businesses can reduce costs for labor by replacing their IT staff. Large businesses can supplement their existing IT staff with after-hours service and consulting.

Four Reasons Why You Should Outsource Your IT Infrastructure

Outsourcing vendors for IT services can help streamline how your business is run and allow your employees to focus on your core competencies. While there are both pros and cons to IT outsourcing, the benefits largely outweigh the costs.

1. Keep Costs Down

No matter what size your business is, you can generate cost savings by outsourcing your IT services.

• Small businesses – Focus your employees on your core business and waste less time solving IT problems
• Medium businesses – Spend less than you would for full time IT staff
• Large businesses – Supplement IT services or outsource data center management services that would be too expensive for an in-house team to provide 

2. Competence in Rare Systems

Information technology has only grown more complex over the past few decades and promises to get increasingly so in the future. Outsourced IT providers have a competitive advantage over in-house IT staff in terms of support service. Where an IT professional is limited by their individual training, IT service providers are constantly training in new and legacy systems and software.

3. Get a Team

When you outsource your IT, you get access to a team of IT professionals for less than it costs to hire in-house. Because IT services are priced per employee or per device, even small businesses can afford to outsource their IT services.

4. Easy to Scale

Because outsourced IT services are priced by your business’s employee size, outsourced IT services are easy to scale. With this sliding scale pricing, your services grow with your business. Make sure your service level agreement allows easy scalability without incurring charges.

Two Cons of IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Services

Where there are benefits of outsourcing, there are also a few drawbacks. However, between the IT outsourcing pros and cons, the pros of infrastructure managed services greatly outweigh the cons.

1. Loss of Control

One disadvantage of outsourcing your IT is that there is a degree to which you lose control over your IT services. However, what you lose in control, you gain in competent infrastructure management. Issues will be prioritized by how critical they are rather than how critical they appear to be. This means that annoying yet benign problems will take a back seat to quiet but critical problems.

2. Security Risks

There are always security risks whenever you allow someone to monitor your IT systems. You can reduce risks by choosing a provider with good security protocols. It’s also important to choose a provider in a region with good cybersecurity regulations and protections such as Canada, the United States, or Europe.

Summing up the Advantages of IT Infrastructure Outsourcing

This is an incomplete list and only touches on the many benefits of IT outsourcing. To understand the business case for IT outsourcing can help your business, contact us today.