Managed IT Services Drive Value for Mid-Sized Businesses
In today’s world, technology is essential to business. While many organizations simply see IT as a cost center, there are ways to mitigate these costs by utilizing managed IT services to increase reliability, reduce risk, and increase operational efficiency. Organizations must invest in IT to continue to stay relevant and secure in a changing world—employees working from home during and after the pandemic is a prime example. But this kind of flexibility requires continued innovation within the IT space, and mid-sized businesses oftentimes lack the resources to do so on their own. Managed IT solutions are the key to mitigating risk while continually improving business processes—providing real business value to the company.
Increased Reliability
Modern businesses run on technology, making the IT department indispensable to daily operations. Unfortunately, outages can and do happen, and when they do, they can be very costly. Gartner estimates that on average, downtime costs companies $5,600 per minute or somewhere between $140K to $540K per hour. Even after an outage is resolved, it requires effort to restore lost data, make required updates, install necessary hardware upgrades, and ultimately get business back on track.
This worst-case scenario can be avoided by working with a managed IT services provider who works around the clock to manage hardware and software and will proactively address issues before they lead to costly outages and downtime.
Aunalytics offers a Secure Managed Services solution that includes 24/7/365 remote monitoring and management to mitigate the risk of your valuable infrastructure going down or becoming unavailable. Our advanced monitoring tool ecosystem allows us to not only respond to equipment that is reporting down in a timely manner, but also to proactively detect system issues and repair them ahead of downtime. Our remote monitoring agent includes client-based interactive support, performance management, alerting, asset management and reporting, while on-site support ensures issues can be resolved quickly at any time of day.
Reduced Security Risk
Ensuring that systems are up-to-date and constantly monitored is just one piece of the equation. Cyberattacks are an increasingly ubiquitous threat for businesses both large and small. In 2021, ransomware attacks increased by almost 105% worldwide, Fortune reports. And these increases are even higher in certain industries—in 2021, governments worldwide saw a 1,885% increase in ransomware attacks, while the health care industry faced a 755% increase, according to the 2022 Cyber Threat Report. In addition, attacks are becoming increasingly malicious and complex. Statista reports that the average duration of the downtime after a ransomware attack had increased from 15 to 20 days between Q1 2020 and Q4 2021.
Just as outages and disruptions due to technical issues can be avoided with proactive maintenance measures, there are steps organizations can take to avoid cyberattacks. McKinsey cites several tactics that have proven successful at mitigating cyberattacks which include: securing remote workstations, multifactor authentication, patch management, disabling user-level command-line capabilities and blocking TCP port 445, protecting Active Directory, and organization-wide education and training.
The in-house IT department of a mid-sized business could implement many of these tactics on its own, but generally these individuals are not data security experts. Knowing how to effectively monitor, manage, detect, prevent, and respond to cyberattacks is a very specialized skillset. Big enterprises have the bandwidth to take on these divisions. The mid-market does not.
By partnering with a managed IT services provider who is entrenched in the latest security best practices and strategies, mid-market companies avoid making costly mistakes and omissions. They can stay well-protected at all times. At Aunalytics, our security expertise includes proactive security services that your business needs to thrive. As threats evolve, your security solutions must adapt. We meet you where you are and guide you on a journey to mature your overall security posture and manage risk.
Increased Operational Efficiency
One of the biggest benefits to partnering with a managed IT services provider is increased operational efficiency. The IT team of a mid-sized business spends most of its time dealing with day-to-day challenges, and they don’t have time to think too far ahead. It can also be difficult for businesses to hire and retain IT talent. Mid-sized businesses increase operational efficiency when they utilize the talents of a managed IT services partner to advise, build, and maintain solutions on the forefront of technological advances. This partnership gives the organization’s internal team the freedom to focus on what they do best.
At Aunalytics, we strongly believe that innovation through technology makes teams more efficient. We are committed to helping organizations digitally transform by guiding and assisting them along every step of the journey. ultimately, allowing them to thrive by working side-by-side with existing teams to drive positive business outcomes through the use of Aunalytics’ technology and solutions.
Aunalytics Managed IT Services
To achieve our mission of helping mid-market businesses thrive, Aunalytics offers a wide range of managed IT and security services. It Aunalytics, we believe security is so vital that our Secure Managed Services solution includes embedded security. We offer everything needed to support the IT needs of mid-sized businesses, including:
- 24/7/365 Remote Monitoring & Management
- Synchronized Network Security Platform
- Internet Protection
- Workstation & Server Patching
- Office 365 Management & Security
- Email Filtering & Security
- Multi-Factor Authentication
- Data & Device Encryption Management
- Security Awareness Training
But at the core of all of our offerings is the team of experts that work side-by-side with clients to meet both their everyday needs and make improvements that will benefit them long-term. For urgent day-to-day issues, the Aunalytics Service Desk is available 24/7/365. Our Service Desk is comprised of knowledgeable technicians and engineers working in tandem to tackle technical issues—both simple and complex—that impact our clients. To keep your business moving forward for the future, we work with your team make improvements to your existing tech stack. With years of experience working with the mid-market, we are confident recommending new technologies and procedures your team may not even realize you need.
The technology and security experts at Aunalytics reduce your risk and increase your efficiency. Gain peace of mind by knowing that our team is there to support your tech initiatives and keep your business up and running and secure.
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The Key to Data-Driven Success for Mid-market Companies Starts Here
The Key to Data-Driven Success for Mid-Market Companies Starts Here
What’s the #1 pain point for IT professionals? According to the business knowledge resource Insights for Professionals, it’s data center management. With this reality in mind, the foundation of digital transformation success for a data-driven business must begin at the data center level, where servers store your data, CPUs power your computations, and your systems are ideally kept stable, operational, and secure for all users, including those accessing company systems and data from multiple remote locations. Competitive mid-market companies rely on data center engineers who specialize in uptime by proactively preventing downtime, as well as connectivity, storage, security, and monitoring.
Effectively managing data to support accessibility and security requires consistent monitoring and up-to-date solutions. Yet the latest research shows that investing in on-premise infrastructure for data management, compliance, and analytics is too pricey for most mid-market companies — and from the view of many IT directors, on-premise solutions have already morphed into old relics. In 2022, Insights for Professionals reported that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of senior IT leaders and company executives aren’t planning to attempt to maintain servers on-premise. Instead, the majority of leaders surveyed plan to invest in cloud infrastructure as a service.
Moving into the Future
In short, entire businesses are migrating to the cloud, not just the technology. The infinite growth of data, applications, connections, and workloads will only further exacerbate businesses’ ability to adapt to new lines of business applications and platforms, meet security and governance requirements, and seamlessly orchestrate and analyze data for business outcomes. As a result, a growing number of mid-market companies are recognizing the value of working with partners to transition storage, computing, backup, and hosting services to cloud-based platforms to leverage the scale and compute power they can provide.
Gartner reports that by 2025, the vast majority — 85 percent — of enterprises will have already shifted over to a cloud-first approach. How did this changing of the guard occur so quickly? According to Gartner, it can be traced in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated cloud adoption since 2020, ushering it in as the “de facto new normal.” Gartner analysts including Gregor Petri even go so far as to state that “enterprise architecture and technology leaders should reject any new product that does not follow ‘cloud first’ as a guiding principle.”
Mid-Market Essentials
There are solid reasons behind mid-market businesses moving their data out of on-premise environments, particularly due to the efficiencies obtained from cloud-based business applications in multi-cloud and hybrid environments. This brings us back to data center vendors, who must then be ready to absorb the responsibility and cost of infrastructure capital expenses and maintenance — and it looks like many are already prepared to do so. In 2022 alone, nearly one-third (32 percent) of those surveyed by Insights for Professionals were planning to invest heavily in cloud management, to the tune of $500,000, while nearly 30 percent plan to spend even more. The largest part of this cloud management investment is being channeled toward security, with enterprises intending to spend 82 percent of this budget on data protection.
This is not a passing trend and is expected to have long-term consequences for purchase decisions in mid-market companies. By 2023, as scalability and cohesive cloud ecosystems join the ranks among the top three buying considerations for IT, Gartner anticipates that cloud architects will become key stakeholders when choosing tools for analytics and business intelligence. Here’s another surprising statistic to show the direction we’re heading in: while hyper-scale cloud providers (hyper-scalers) delivered and managed less than 1 percent of installed edge computing platforms in 2020, Gartner predicts this number to balloon to 20 percent by the end of 2023.
Different Needs for Mid-Market Players
There’s a catch, though, about hyper-scalers: most are not built for the mid-market. Therefore, mid-market companies won’t be able to reap the maximum benefit from the ability of traditional hyper-scale cloud providers to bring global business solutions, outsourcing, and consulting capabilities that can help other types of organizations migrate to, adopt, and build cloud-native offerings. It’s true that traditional hyper-scalers excel in leveraging the expertise of their cloud professionals to consult for platform re-architecture, application development, data migration, and transitioning services from technology stacks into macro- and microservices hosted in a data center on-premise, private cloud, public cloud (or any multi-cloud or hybrid combination thereof) — but not generally for mid-market companies.
Let’s drill down into some specific problems for mid-market players around hyper-scale cloud providers:
- It can be cost-prohibitive to obtain the level of help that most mid-market companies require, since most hyper-scalers are priced for large enterprises. Mid-market companies tend to need “white glove” services, which carry the highest price tag.
- Greater needs. Enterprises are more likely to already have in-house teams with the necessary skillsets to work with traditional hyper-scalers, compared to mid-market businesses that often have higher needs for expert help.
- No data analytics. While many enterprise hyper-scalers help migrate data to third-party cloud vendor platforms, their services end there, as they don’t offer data analytics.
Mid-market companies need technical experts to help build solutions on a mid-market budget — specifically, they require a hyper-scaler capable of providing an end-to-end solution focused on the mid-market sector. The goal in evaluating potential solutions providers should be for the cloud foundation to operate seamlessly with end-to-end data management and analytics solutions. With an end-to-end solution, mid-market businesses have the opportunity to obtain the results they desire without wasting time on a “Frankenstein” approach, assembling parts and pieces of multiple technologies and tools in an attempt to construct a reliable system that actually works. It’s only by going the end-to-end route that mid-market companies can receive the greater level of assistance they need on the technology front, as well as benefit from the robust data and analytics skillsets necessary to achieve meaningful business outcomes, without paying enterprise prices.
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Why Mid-Market Organizations Need Digital Transformation Solutions that Combine the Right Technology and Talent to Achieve Business Value
At Aunalytics, we know that an organization’s everyday data holds value, yet is a resource that often remains untapped. This is especially true for the mid-market—this market segment has been underserved and often lacks access to data management and analytics technologies and expertise. Our mission is to empower the mid-market with solutions that enable digital transformation so they can compete and stay relevant.
Digital transformation calls for mid-market companies to shift away from operational silos and work across the company to harness the power of data. This requires the integration of diverse technology across all functional business areas to enable convergence, promote a positive cultural change, drive customer value, and facilitate operational agility. Gartner’s report “Over 100 Data and Analytics Predictions Through 2025” asserts that by 2024, 75% of organizations will have established a centralized data and analytics center of excellence to support federated data and analytics initiatives and prevent enterprise failure. By 2023, organizations with shared companywide data management goals, including stewardship, governance, and semantics to enable inter-enterprise data sharing, will outperform those that don’t.
There is a recipe for successfully transforming massive amounts of corporate and third-party data created and used daily in your lines of business into a valuable asset. But to achieve business outcomes, organizations need to implement digital transformation solutions that include the right technologies/tools combined with the right talent.
The Right Tools and Technology
Mid-market companies generally do not currently have the tools needed to find value in their data through advanced analytics and AI. An enterprise data warehouse is only one piece of the puzzle. Successful mid-market digital transformation requires the appropriate storage and compute infrastructure, data management platform, and analytics software. It can be difficult to piece together each of these components into a single, unified system—it is expensive, time-consuming, and inefficient.
To solve this challenge, Aunalytics has developed a robust, cloud-native data platform built for universal data access, powerful analytics, and AI. Mid-market businesses benefit from using an end-to-end, cloud-based platform as it moves the burden of infrastructure procurement and maintenance to a third-party vendor in the data industry. An end-to-end platform is secure, reliable, and scalable while including the added benefit of being deployed and managed as a service. This is especially important for mid-market businesses because finding the right talent to execute digital transformation initiatives is extremely challenging in the current market.
The Right Talent and Expertise
Most IT departments do not currently have the skill sets needed for getting business value out of data. At the same time, for most mid-market companies, it does not make business sense to hire an entire division of highly compensated data experts to achieve digital transformation goals. Even if a mid-market company can find and hire these scarce resources—they were hard to come by even before the Talent War of 2022.
Establishing a side-by-side partnership with a data platform company is the key to gaining the benefits of working with experts including cloud engineers, data engineers, security experts, data scientists and other highly skilled technical resources to achieve true business value. By getting expert help, you can devote your company’s time, resources, and innovation to your business and focus on what you do best.
Aunalytics provides a team of experts who assist every step of the way. Mid-market businesses will have access to the right tools, resources, and support throughout our end-to-end process. Our team also includes industry experts who help businesses identify areas in which data can provide the most value, and guidance on how to work toward achieving these goals.
Aunalytics’ Digital Transformation Solution Gives Mid-Sized Businesses Answers
With Aunalytics, you get the technology and expertise required to complete the journey from data to actionable business results. This combination accelerates digital transformation, which allows businesses to realize the value of their investment quickly. By taking advantage of the experienced data professionals at Aunalytics, organizations can save time and avoid making costly mistakes while also maximizing the value currently hidden in their data.
eBook: What Mid-Market Companies Need for Data-Driven Success and How to Get It
What Mid-Market Companies Need for Data-Driven Success and How to Get It
Using your data as an asset to drive competitive business growth and achieve cost cutting operational efficiencies is imperative for a company to compete, survive, and thrive. Increasingly, data and analytics have become a primary driver of business strategy and the potential of data-driven business strategies is greater today than ever.
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Aunalytics is a data platform company. We deliver insights as a service to answer your most important IT and business questions.
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