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Why managed services ease innovation

Canadian businesses are hungry to innovate. Are managed services the key to help them do it?

 

People sitting around a boardroom conversing

Canadian businesses are hungry to innovate, and they’re investing to ensure their technology is ahead of the curve. In fact, according to IDC, Canadian enterprises are currently spending $2.1 billion annually in innovation.

The drive is understandable: from cloud computing to next-generation networking, new technologies have the power to transform corporate computing, improving the efficiency and agility with which organizations can perform key workloads and delivering new cost efficiencies. According to IDC research, businesses are investing heavily in cloud services, improving their WANs, and securing their networks.

But while the appetite to innovative is strong, many businesses find the technical challenges of adoption are preventing them from doing so as quickly as they’d like. For example, one large survey of CIOs and IT leaders found that data loss and privacy risks were among the chief concerns standing in the way of cloud adoption. One in five also had concerns about the impact on their business’s IT organization, and 12% were worried about business continuity and disaster recovery.

"Nearly half of CIOs and IT leaders say data loss and privacy risks are standing in the way of cloud adoption."

Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey 2018

Meanwhile, the current state of IT makes it tricky to support innovation internally, as organizations continue to focus the majority of their budget and resources on maintaining their existing technology. Nearly six in 10 IT leaders report that inadequate resources are preventing them from innovating, while in a separate survey, 65% said an internal lack of skills was holding their organization back.

Does this mean innovation is out of reach for most businesses? Not so fast.

In its annual trend report, IDC also notes a shift to managed services, predicting that spending on managed models will grow from $1 billion USD in 2017 to $1.6 billion in 2021. While this reflects annual compound growth of just 14.1%, companies shifting to managed service models may have found the key to a smoother transition to new technologies.

Unlike traditional in-house IT who may have had limited on-the-job exposure to emerging technologies, managed services shift the complexities onto specialized service providers who can offer the expertise and experience needed to bring businesses’ innovation goals to fruition. From helping to determine an optimal virtualization solution to working with staff to develop a customized deployment plan, managed service providers can augment your in-house resources to ease the transition. They can also assist with crucial tasks and strategies such as compliance and threat management, monitoring your network, proactively deploying patches, and delivering other key services.

It’s wise to approach innovation thoughtfully and with a plan that ensures your resources can support the transition. But if you’re concerned that you can’t adequately support the transition to the new technologies that enable innovation, a managed services provider may be the perfect partner.