Are your ICT managed services cost-effective? Part 3

How do you know if your ICT managed services contract is delivering the best available value for your organisation?

In Part 1 we discussed: what delivery model is your managed services provider (MSP) using? Dedicated, shared, on-demand? The dedicated delivery model will cost you a multiple of the other, leveraged, models, potentially 2 to 3 times, but may still best suit some organisations. All delivery models offer different sets of pros and cons, but the need for core managed services to be delivered locally, and with that, dedicated services, is diminishing.

Part 2 dealt with improvements and innovations your MSP is proactively bringing to your organisation. You should expect your MSP to optimally exploit modern technologies and platforms, to apply lessons learned from previous, similar project delivery experiences, and, at the operational, service desk level, you should see cost and/or service improvements as their knowledge base of your ICT environment expands over time. If you’re not seeing these benefits you really need to think hard about your current managed services contract.

Next, as an extension of Part 2, let’s talk specifically about whether your MSP is helping your organisation optimally exploit the alternative application, compute and storage platforms: data centre, on premise and cloud.

First, let’s establish a key point – there is no “one size fits all”.

The optimum use of these platforms is completely dependent on the characteristics of your organisation’s business operations and internal processes and data. So, the notion of “everything’s going to the cloud” is highly debatable, despite the many advantages of cloud platforms.

Some organisations’ data is so sensitive that going to the cloud means too much risk, perceived or real. In other cases, it’s nothing to do with data sensitivity. For example, if you’re an organisation with remote operations and a lot of production data (e.g. a remote mine site, or an offshore oil platform), where the available, affordable telecommunications bandwidth is limited, it makes little sense to try pumping your data up into (and getting back down from) the cloud – it’s neither practical nor economical.

But the point here is that, by now, if you’re not an organisation constrained by data sovereignty issues, your MSP should have no excuse whatsoever to not having taken a good hard look at optimising the mix of application, compute and storage cloud / on-premise / data centre platforms for your organisation. After all, the notion and availability of cloud computing is at least a decade or more, old – depending on which ICT industry gurus / vendors you give credit to.

If your MSP hasn’t yet seriously explored the options for you, and, hopefully, worked to migrate you wholly or partly out of the data centre and / or your premises, you are paying too much for your ICT. Potentially a great deal too much.

You’re also not optimally positioned to cope with your organisation’s changing business needs. If this is the case, you need to ask your MSP why.

Frontline Services lives and breathes IT platform optimisation, both in advising organisations about their optimum ICT architecture, and well as in delivering managed services for clients. If you want help with this topic, feel free to contact us via www.frontline-services.com.au .

Stay tuned for the rest of Steve’s Series, published weekly here and on his LinkedIn page.


About Steve Richards, General Manager

Steve is an experienced General Manager with over 35 years’ experience, and a demonstrated history of delivering outcomes. He bring extensive experience to the Frontline Services Executive team, particular in the information technology and services industry, as well as Finance and Oil & Gas. Skilled in Sales Management, Change Management, General Management, Program and Project Management, Steve’s breadth of knowledge makes him a welcome leader for our expanding team. 

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