What is Third-Party Maintenance and What are its Types?
How secure is your business in the event of a data failure? Did you know that more than 75%
of businesses fail within six months if they experience a significant disaster? Every
organization needs IT maintenance services, to ensure that data remains safe. Businesses lose
more than $1.2 trillion a year due to IT failures in the U.S. alone. IT failures bug companies
big time. On an average, companies lost out on as much as $84,000 an hour because of
downtime, International Data Corp. estimates.
In fact, even a minor glitch in the data center can wreck havoc and deteriorate the brand’s
image. A third-party maintenance company is one that would take care of the entire
infrastructure in order to ensure you face no technical problems. There are several companies
worldwide that offer flexible and cost-effective IT maintenance services to OEM hardware.
This is divided into several categories and you’re free to opt for one that meets your
requirements.
Third-party companies that offer 24/7 maintenance services are capable of dealing with
servers, storage systems, workstations and switches. While maintenance can deal with both
software as well as hardware aspects of an organization, it is the later that takes more effort
and money. Furthermore, maintenance companies can manage your precious equipment
regardless of the OEM.
For instance, IBM, Oracle, Dell, and HP servers can all be managed by the same company so
you don’t have to multiple contracts. In addition, they’d also maintain your storage systems
from Dell, NetApp or any other OEM. Assigning the task of maintenance to a third-party
company has innumerable advantages, some of which include:
Reduced Risks: With tones of experience, your maintenance team is well – equipped to deal
with any problem that may pose to be a major risk to your business.
Improved Efficiency: As the maintenance staff takes care of all the technical issues, you
wouldn’t have to ask your employees to perform mundane tasks of diagnosing such
problems.
Consolidated and streamlined support: With a single contract to the third – party company,
you can ensure all your platforms and networks are well – maintained. Save your time and
resources and get your maintenance done from a single source. Hire a 3rd party IT maintenance service provider who can help you to take care of all your IT needs. Here is a look at some of the factors that you need to think about.
– The experience
Does the provider have the necessary resources to meet the client IT needs and requirements?
Normally, the organization may need to spend up around 5-7% of its total IT budget on
effective IT maintenance solutions. You need to ensure that the provider can work with your
budget.
– Do you need fully managed IT maintenance services?
If you have software engineers at your organization, you might want to do it yourself.
However, you need to be able to read and respond to data in log files. That’s why you can
have fully managed IT maintenance solutions.
It is also important to check whether the provider addresses the required security and
compliance issues. Your recourse to 3rd party IT maintenance services should be able to help
you deal with your organizations’ different IT needs easily.
