Business Technology Roundtable

A new report from Forrester Research on the state of IT security at small to midsize businesses (SMB) in North America and Europe predicts ongoing growth in the managed security space. In a result similar to that of enterprise respondents, SMB executives reported that the two top drivers for using managed security services is the demand for a specialized skill set that security requires (cited by 31% of the respondents) and the need to reduce costs (cited by 24%). Other reasons cited for adopting managed security services include: The need to reduce complexity (19%) The need for 24/7 security coverage (19%) The rest of the IT environment is outsourced (5%) Managed Services Tops for Filtering and Monitoring The report also revealed that the top two services SMBs ask from their managed security provider are e-mail or Web content filtering (36%) and network firewall monitoring (33%). Forrester believes that the biggest uptick in the next year, however, will come from increased use of vu...

Are you puzzled about how to choose the best-fit managed service solution for your particular business needs? As a basic guide, the following are three typical high-level scenarios for deploying managed network services . Scenario 1: Customer Owns Network and Shares Management Responsibility Companies that already have an internal IP network can continue to manage it while out-tasking the management of onsite equipment -- usually known as customer-premises equipment (CPE), used for the managed service (see Figure 1). The Roles and Responsibilities are as follows: Managed service provider -- Sets up, maintains, and administers the equipment needed for the managed service, including company-owned equipment such as servers. Company -- Managed service customer maintains and administers its internal network. Scenario 2: Service Provider Owns the CPE; Customer Can Share Equipment Management with Service Provider Some companies do not own a LAN, either because the location is new or the compa...

According to a recent McKinsey & Company report, their research results demonstrated that the potential for managing servers and other IT resources remotely is essentially underutilized. However, changes in the current business environment will increase the adoption of this approach. Plato, a wise Greek philosopher, wrote about how "necessity is the mother of invention." Certainly, that perspective is equally valid today. The motivation for utilizing the resources of a service provider can be considerable. A case in point: Fortune 50 companies, with budgets of $2 billion, can save as much as $500 million of their IT infrastructure budgets. How, you may ask? Apparently, it's mostly from reducing fully-loaded labor costs. Evaluation of IT Assets and Liabilities McKinsey surveyed 141 CIOs at multinational corporations, and 34 percent of them said that they anticipate utilizing some infrastructure management services over the next three years -- which is an increase from...

With more and more managed service providers (MSPs) entering the market, your choices are expanding. If you choose the wrong one, however, you might wind up with more challenges than benefits. How do you know? According to Matt Cowall at Appia Communications , it’s often as simple as asking. In part one of this post , we covered three of the top five questions to ask a managed service provider: How long has an MSP been in business? What kind of support does the MSP offer? And what kind of redundancy does the MSP offer? Today we’ll cover the remaining two questions that Matt recommends you ask, and they’re arguably the two most important: What quality of service does the MSP provide? This is probably the most important question, of course. You’ll learn quite a bit about an MSP’s service quality when you check its references. Be sure to ask what happens when there are issues. Does the MSP respond quickly and take ownership of the problem? Another key indicator is the MSP’s service level ...

The benefits of outsourcing make a simple and strong case, and more organizations are choosing to do so. As a natural result, more and more companies are entering the managed services provider (MSP) market. According to Matt Cowall at Appia Communications , some of them are well-qualified; others are simply trying to take advantage of a market opportunity. Price is important, but it's not the only consideration, and the benefits of using an MSP can quickly evaporate if you choose the wrong one. Matt recommends five key questions to ask before selecting an MSP. We'll discuss three of them today. How long has an MSP been in business? As in any business, there's an art and science to offering managed services. One obvious way to separate the experienced MSPs from the wannabes is to ask how long they've been in business. If they've been operational for some time, they probably will have already addressed any service delivery issues they may have experienced in the begin...