IT Outsourcing Has Been Around For A While

Outsourced IT is still a relatively new concept, but outsourced services in general have been around for quite some time. Business owners and even individual users have been taking advantage of outsourced services for quite some time, and the fact that they can take advantage of managed IT services via outsourcing companies makes managing their technology much easier.

Let’s take a trip back to 1980s, where technology titans Eastman Kodak and IBM formed a contract to build a large data center specifically for Kodak’s needs. IBM was to design, build, and implement a large data center that fit Kodak’s specifications. What this showed to the world was that a large company outsourced a large project to a third party. Kodak even fostered collaboration between its own internal staff by transferring them directly to IBM. Other large organizations looked at this collaboration and thought to themselves, “Well, Eastman Kodak is doing it. Why can’t we?”

The major shift in mindset regarding IT services is that, where it was once preferable to have an in-house IT department, it is becoming more lucrative to outsource these services due to the introduction of managed service providers. IBM is one of the companies that became the earliest managed service provider for its time, introducing an all-new method of technology management that companies had never dreamed of.

Businesses started to think about which services could be outsourced. For example, application service providers called ASPs began to provide business software to organizations in need of it. For example, payroll software and timesheet keeping solutions, as well as productivity suites, are all examples of software that can be provided as a service. Some of these solutions are provided as a downloaded application, while others are accessed through the Internet. Either way, the end result is that the business acquires a solution at a flat monthly rate that they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise.

Ultimately, organizations learned from the rise of ASPs and began to offer many different kinds of solutions using the same business model. These are the managed IT services that we know and love today. Since break-fix IT was an unreliable and inconvenient way of maintaining technology solutions, small businesses sought a better way to handle their mission-critical IT. Companies can even save money in the process since they aren’t paying for salaried employees to perform the work of IT professionals. Plus, since they aren’t paying their employees to do IT work themselves, the work is more likely to be completed properly the first time.

Ultimately, managed IT presents an opportunity for a single point of contact for any and all technology needs of your business. Whether it’s cloud computing or network security, we’ve got you covered. To learn more about what we can do for your business, reach out to XFER at 734-927-6666 / 800-GET-XFER.