For many companies the summer month often mean a slow-down in activity. Employees take longer vacations, client requests tend to slow down, and businesses will often see an increase in work-from-home requests. It’s understandable why. For many states, the summer is a short-lived period of sun and warmth and so everyone wants to take advantage of it. While a managed IT services provider can offer your company the highest quality IT support and management throughout the year, they are especially helpful during the summer months.
Here are a few of the benefits of having a managed IT services provider on-board during the summer months:
Potential Cost Savings
IT systems require a lot of cooling to keep components from overheating, especially during the dog days of summer. In addition to seeing an increase in your electric bill for the use of the air conditioning system for the office to keep employees and workstations cool, companies with a lot of servers, network switches, and other components will see their bills go even higher. An IT services provider can assist your company with making the move to the cloud, where maintenance costs including cooling and HVAC are all handled by the cloud provider. You as the customer simply pay your monthly rates based on what you use. Or if you can’t move everything to the cloud, your managed IT provider can assist with consolidating existing components to reduce the strain on your company’s utility bills.
Staff Assistance and Support
As many employees take time off during the summer, often companies are stuck with the task of ensuring their mission-critical departments (such as IT) have at least one person on staff at all times. This can be very tricky for companies with small IT departments, let alone only having one “IT guy” on staff, period. Between vacations and the summer holidays, it can be a difficult juggling act to make sure that you have someone keeping an eye on your IT environment. This is where a managed IT services provider comes in handy. With your service agreement, you have eyes on your IT infrastructure at all times – regardless of how many employees are in the office. This way, your staff (including high level executives) can take their well-deserved vacations without having to worry about IT coverage.
Additionally, with more employees looking to work from home during the summer months, a managed IT services provider can assist with making sure remote log-ins, VPNs, and other telecommuting systems (such as video conferencing) are in tip-top shape, so if employees do decide to work from home, they won’t have any troubles logging-in as they would normally do in the office.
Ideal Time for IT Infrastructure Improvements
With more employees out of the office and slower business activity, the summer months offer a prime time to explore IT upgrades and infrastructure improvements. A managed IT services provider will work with your in-house IT department, your CEO, and your employees to identify specific needs and goals of having components upgraded or replaces as well as installing new software or migrating specific systems to the cloud. Workstation upgrades can be conducted over the summer when employees are on vacation or working from home. The lower demand on IT resources during the summer months means major upgrades such as network overhauls or server replacements can occur with a lower impact on employees and business productivity.
