UC
While the “cloud” is all the rage in the press these days, the reality is that the vast majority of organizations still in-source their UC applications. But another reality is that deployments are increasingly complex as IT managers face not only the need to integrate disparate systems, but manage performance across a growing array of end-points and locations. Trying to meet these challenges solely with in-house staff is rare. Instead, companies are increasingly relying on third parties to overcome these challenges.
Cost savings is still the primary driver for use of managed services with 70% of companies citing it as their top reason for engaging third parties. But outsourcing is frequently going beyond simply break-fix for commodity services, especially among larger firms. Our research has found that other top drivers for using managed services include “lack of expertise” (30.5%) and “lack of staff” (25.4%), while “faster implementation” is cited as the primary benefit for almost 12% of firms.
Many companies successfully using managed services identify a few key financial benefits. First, they often save on staffing costs because they are able to take advantage of the economies of scale that come with shared, managed services. Basically, the primary burden of support and maintenance shifts from the IT staff to the third-party partner. For example, an IP telephony manager typically earns between $80,000 and $100,000 (fully loaded) for a 40- to 50-hour week. Multiply that by three to get 24 x 7 support during the week, and another two part-time weekend staff members. The total for one 24 x 7-equivalent resource managing IP telephony reaches $336,000 to $420,000 per year.
A managed services provider employs a stable of individuals—and equally as important, a solid portfolio of monitoring and management products—to effectively manage multiple customers’ IP PBXs, handsets, and even related UC applications. Pricing varies widely when organizations move to managed service providers, but they typically charge about 20% to 30% less when comparing like-for-like services. In a cost analysis, IT managers must evaluate what they currently have and what they would get by using managed services. For example, companies may not see an actual cost decrease by going from 10 x 5 internally managed service to 24 x 7 externally managed service, but they get more value because they would go to ‘round-the-clock management.
Further cost savings emerge because organizations may either reduce staff through attrition or straightforward layoffs. But more commonly, they reassign the staff members to other positions, which also saves the cost of recruiting and hiring an entirely new person to the IT team. Staff will often get assigned to more strategic roles – evaluating emerging services, working with lines of business, or addressing process issues that hamper effective IT management, again adding further value to the organization.
One point to remember, though, is that outsourcers don’t manage themselves. Success requires a strong relationship between the IT staff and the outsourcer. It’s crucial to identify an individual (for small and midsize companies) or a small team (for larger companies) to manage the outsourcer. To develop an effective partnership and make sure the relationship is successful, IT staffs must invest some time into the relationship, albeit significantly less time than if they were managing the technology directly.
