According to new research, Australian businesses lose more than $762,000 per incident due to application downtime.
Another survey involving 1,000 IT professionals found that business-critical outages cost $144,062.52 per hour for larger organisations. In smaller businesses, this figure is more than $2,000 per hour – over a standard eight hour work day this adds up to $16,000.00.
Having a stable and consistent network is vital in a competitive business environment. Both managed IT services and reactive IT services enable the ongoing continuity of the network.
However, both work in different ways and have different costs to a business.
With entirely different approaches to IT support, businesses need to consider the expense when deciding their technology strategy.
Reactive IT support
Reactive IT support is most commonly a break-fix solution. Here, the service provider doesn’t get involved until the business reaches out after something has gone wrong or they are required for a specific project.
Even if the entire network is down and the continuity of the services is under threat, you would have to call your service provider to fix the issue after it is impacting the business.
Downtime is a common occurrence here since no one is there to manage your system until it goes down.
Often, the tech professional is unaware of the issue until they are on-site to check the system to find the cause of the outage.
Handling IT support yourself and involving the service provider at the last minute doesn’t do much for the continuity of the system.
Since the network is not monitored proactively, downtime is the signal that things have gone wrong.
It may sound like a cheaper option since you do not have to pay anything until the services are rendered, but that doesn’t take into account the cost of downtime and the lost productivity. Going to back to the earlier point regarding the average cost of an outage – if you are a small business can you afford to lose $16,000 in one day due to an outage?
With reactive IT support, you are also not protecting yourself from security incidents and data breaches.
Managed IT Services Vs Reactive IT Support? Which is Cheaper
Managed IT support focuses on the continued availability of the network.
In simpler terms, prevention is better than cure.
Here any problems arising are more likely to get resolved even before they create downtime. This is because your service provider will be on the move even before any issue crops up.
Managed IT services use complex monitoring tools to maintain a stable and secure system.
With this type of support, issues are generally solved even before they threaten the system.
Your service provider also plans for scheduled maintenance services for preventing network downtime.
“When your network and data aren’t protected, you may face expensive consequences at any time in the future.”
With managed IT services, you not only get uninterrupted service and a secured system but also:
- Regular updates and application updates
- Antivirus updates as and when they are released
- Prevent accessing malicious websites
- Prevent external sources from accessing your network
- Unlimited support both phone and remote to improve productivity.
It’s true that managed IT services will usually cost more than reactive IT services.
However when you consider the cost of money lost when a major issue occurs, you’ll wish you had a proactive solution in place.
Conclusion
Every business, big or small, must consider IT support for efficiency, productivity, and savings.
But the question remains, which must you go for managed IT services or reactive IT support?
Reactive IT support will start cheaper, but taking the big picture into account, it is very expensive.
The future of IT support is managed IT services, especially for small and mid-sized businesses.
Contact our team if you’d like to discuss our Managed IT service options.