No matter what size the business, in today's increasingly "all-IP" world, the network is essential to overall success.
In the enterprise, the network may run everything from the heating and cooling system to the management of customer data within the enterprise CRM system and everything in between.
More and more sensitive data is residing on the IP network and companies are taking advantage of mobile access and communications technologies. With that, experts say, small to medium-sized businesses are becoming preferred targets for cybercriminals due to a lack of robust network protection and management. SMBs are also increasingly turning to the cloud to save money, operate more efficiently and scale up or down more easily.
While SMBs require the same operations for success as the larger corporation, enterprise-level resources may not be available to support complete network consistency. At the same time, SMBs lack technical expertise in-house to oversee the network motivates the company to turn outsource their network to a managed service provider.
According to David Kakish, president and CEO of Chicago-based IT staffing provider InhouseCIO, an IT person will often go into an SMB to bring the network up to expected operation and performance, but then quickly get bored with the lack of challenge within the environment. They view the SMB environment as lacking the equipment that enables the development of IT skills. As a result, IT people are hard to find and even harder to keep.
And analysts back up his point of view.
David Smith, a vice president and research fellow at Gartner (News - Alert), recently told TMCnet that it is becoming less and less likely that an SMB will have any in-house IT staff at all. Unfortunately, cyber-criminals know this, making SMBs a target because they lack sophistication and a skilled staff.
The good news is that not everything surrounding the network in an SMB is a threat to its integrity. Dedicated and outsourced IT staff members are often schooled in the tools available to SMBs seeking to leverage cloud computing. Google (News - Alert), for instance, offers packaged applications for businesses as well as the ability to develop apps.
Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps, recently told TMCnet: "It's extremely tough for an SMB to run servers. In many of these businesses, many of them do not have an IT department whatsoever, or even an IT person … It's very difficult, for example, if they need to stand up a mail server or stand up a repository for documents, or to figure out a way to track inventory - all of those kinds of things are difficult for them to try to build on their own."
One place, of course, that many businesses turn is to a managed service provider.
As SMBs seek MSPs to help them leverage the capabilities available for secure operation of the network, turning to an MSP who partners with products such as Ipswitch's (News - Alert) WhatsUp Gold can deliver even more value to the SMB. Such a partnership enables the MSP to maintain or increase service levels; build the role of trusted advisor to its customers; assist with planning customer IT investments; and differentiate managed services offerings.
Predictive, SLA-compliant network monitoring is essential for MSPs, and WhatsUp Gold ensures the MSP knows a customer's network better than they do. The WhatsUp Gold MSP Edition supports a diverse client base with a wide variety of network types, architectures and equipment. With this robust solution in place, the MSP can guarantee optimal network security and management for the SMB.
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