Placing Your Trust in the Hands of A Stranger

There are many reasons that bring businesses around to considering the idea of outsourcing their IT to an external provider. For some, it could be that there is a lack of in-house expertise and that hiring an in-house IT manager may be a luxury they just cannot afford. For others it may be the need to focus on running their core business without the unwanted distraction of attempting to manage a highly technical complicated space fraught with compliance dangers.

Whatever the reason, the idea of outsourcing IT support signifies the passing of one of any business’s most precious of assets to someone outside of their circle of trust. Yet for most small to medium sized businesses it is something they must often look at doing based on the cost implications of running their own internal IT department and running on what would almost certainly be a break/fix scenario that could result in prolonged periods of downtime.

But when you reach this point there are obviously various aspects you ought to consider. Does the organisation you are looking at have a track record in IT security and compliance? Do they have extensive references in support of the case for placing your trust in them? You might, for instance, want to take a look at how long they have they been in business and what their accreditations say about the work they carry out for existing clients? Take a look at the key technology partners they work with, as this will give you an idea of the level of expertise. Do they hold accreditations from the likes of Microsoft, HP, Sophos, Symantec, Veeam or VMware? Those will give you an indication as to the depth of expertise you are dealing with.

Another thing to consider is the range of clients. Does your prospective new IT solutions provider or consultancy look provide the same service and focus for businesses locally as it does for other national and internationally renowned brands that it serves? Serving a range of different sized brands with varied needs – such as IT strategy, storage, cloud migration, virtualisation and managed support – means that your supplier will be forced to prepare for and insure against every eventuality.

Any outsourced IT supplier ought to be working with one eye on your future and guiding you strategically on what the business should be doing with regards to securing its assets in preparation for upcoming regulations such as the GDPR. Are they encrypting data securely to latest standards such as ISO 27001? And should you, for instance, take a mixture of on-premise and cloud to give yourself a hybrid solution or do you need to take advantage of a private cloud solution wrapped up in 24/7 support in a UK data centre?

Whatever your concern, CIS has been answering questions like these and more for our clients over the past 25 years. Indeed, an increase in such demands has meant that we have also recently rolled out extended office support from 8am until midnight. This brings two new benefits to businesses we serve. Not only does it give you the additional comfort that comes with the extra cover provided, but it also allows for increased levels of uptime as updates and security patches can be taken care of once everyone else has left the building.

To find out what we can do for you please visit: www.cisltd.com or contact Gareth Johnson.