The days when the computer was a big box sitting in an air conditioned room serviced by a strange bunch of people who spoke a language no one really understood have been past for some time now. With the advent of miniaturization and Laptops and PCs that great big box no longer does the thinking and in fact in many instances that box has all but disappeared.

Instead in most enterprises we have a myriad of little desktop and laptop computers which are joined together with some form of network. As part of that network is a great big, often air conditioned cupboard which contain servers. On these servers is all the data and databases of the enterprise. If the Enterprise is big or decentralized there may be a whole bunch of servers in different locations which may or may not be connected to each other via an internet connection.

But anyone will tell you that in the world of networks all is not happiness and light. These servers need to be managed and all the various devices that connect to them still need at least one of these guys who talks “computerese” and this computer tech support may be kept busy with individual machines.

A further problem is the software. Each device on the network must have licensed software to run. Let us presume this is a windows environment. It is necessary to install windows on each device on the network, and when Windows upgrades as it seems to do frequently in is necessary to pay for the license to upgrade with it.

Each company’s it support services will spend an inordinate amount of time tracking which computer has what software an when a license renewal or upgrade is required. This is not only time consuming but also costly. Next we come to the proprietary software. Most users will want MS Office which includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation program plus one or two other things. But these will be underutilized by most. The presentation software for example may sit unused for weeks at a time and when it is used it is only viewing a presentation put together by someone else. But the license must be paid.

Someone once asked Lord Colman how he became so rich and he said it was because of the mustard left on plate uneaten. So it is with some of the big software houses. People are forced to buy licenses for software they don’t use very much at all.

And now we come to managed IT services. Instead of having one’s own server and lots of smart PCs around containing expensive and unused software if one elects to start using Managed IT Services one only pays for what one actually uses.

In every way it is a win win situation. One has a remote cloud which is managed by professionals who ensure that your network has maximum up time. The it support services you receive are second to none with guys always on standby and more importantly you only pay for the use of the software that you actually use.