IT Support Dorset

The difference between IT support and managed IT services.

This is a question we get asked a lot, so in this week’s blog post we thought we’d address it.

Running a small to mid-sized business today can be tough, especially with the development of the internet making competition that bit more fierce. Bigger organisations are often able to invest heavily in their IT network, often creating in-house IT teams to look after it, which is a luxury that smaller business can’t afford. Having said that, it’s no less frustrating when the staff of smaller businesses face niggly IT issues which interrupt their work day.

IT Support is reactive, managed services are proactive
Reactive support is also known as break-fix. Something breaks, and then we react by fixing it. For example if your printer were to stop printing, you could log that with us and we can then work with you to fix it.

With managed services, we’re proactively monitoring and maintaining IT systems and can often predict and fix issues before they even become a problem to you, reducing IT pain points and minimising downtime.

As part of our managed services offering, we can provide:

Managed security
Managed communications like VoIP telephone systems and emails
Managed hardware
Managed backups
Managed services don’t just mean that we’ll be monitoring your systems to prevent problems, we can also run updates at times which suit you outside office hours, so you never have to worry about your work being interrupted by the latest update.

We can make sure your computer systems are secure and in line with GDPR guidelines, and make sure your computer systems are working for your business and in top condition.

To get the most out of your IT, we recommend a combination of both support approaches. You need a responsive provider who can fix annoying issues quickly as they arise, but lots of these problems can be solved before you even realise they’re problems if you have managed services in place.

SMBs are switching to proactive managed IT services to combat this, enabling them access to a level of IT expertise and stand on the leveled playing field, right alongside larger competitors.