IT support is a huge part of business nowadays. Every organisation that utilizes technology needs to have the means to support and manage it correctly. For the vast majority of time that IT has existed, it has been generally accepted that IT support can only be done in-house. This is due to various things – but namely because, if a business wanted problems to be fixed quickly, they needed their IT professionals to be close at hand. But is this still a valid reason for businesses to keep IT in-house? In recent years, other options have appeared – namely remote IT support. We reached out to some companies that provide these services, and we will look at whether businesses still need their on-premise IT teams in 2023.
On-premise IT Support
As the name suggests, most IT support that happens around the world is carried out by teams and engineers that work onsite – employees experiencing IT difficulties can call up their helpdesk, and an engineer will make their way to the person’s desk very quickly. One company we spoke to, who provide IT support Law Firms use, stated that onsite IT support is mainly useful for businesses that have on-premise infrastructure hardware. Some of the main benefits of on-site IT support are as follows: whathowbuzz Blogs for Industry News & Trends Daily. biographywiki Celebryty Biography of Famous Personalities
- Proximity – The main benefit of onsite IT teams is that they have the whathowbuzz Blogs for Industry News & Trends Daily. biographywiki Celebryty Biography of Famous Personalities best proximity to all of a business’ hardware. For businesses that rely on their office, and on-premise hardware, this is valuable.
- On-Premise Problems – For businesses with physical infrastructure, there will be certain IT problems that require in-person troubleshooting and maintenance.
Many businesses continue to dismiss the prospect of relying on remote IT support, because they still rely on their office. Does this logic make sense? Let’s now look at remote IT support, and the capabilities that it has.
Remote IT Support
Nowadays, many more businesses are working in alternative ways such as with remote work, and hybrid work. This has been a big shift in the last few years, but the trend of remote IT support has been going on for much longer. There are many technologies that have contributed to the growth in remote IT support. Firstly, IT engineers are now able to connect with PCs remotely, and request control – this allows them to troubleshoot issues on devices from anywhere – with the ubiquity of internet connectivity, this is a technique that is rarely likely to fail in a business context. Furthermore, businesses are increasingly moving away from on-premise infrastructure, in favour of the cloud. We spoke to one company that specialises in business IT support London companies have been accessing remotely for years. According to them, as the cloud has grown in popularity, so has the popularity of remote support services. The main benefits of remote IT support are as follows:
- Scalability – The good thing about a remote service is that businesses that are using it don’t need to worry about hiring staff when their needs grow.
- Digital Tools & Channels are the Future – It is widely agreed that business is shifting to become much more digitally-native. This means that remote IT support will become increasingly viable, and on-premise support may become increasingly inefficient.
- Better Consistency – When a business hires their own IT staff, they need to accept that if all their staff are unavailable, they must go without active IT support. As a professional service, remote IT support is designed so that sick leave or holidays do not interfere with their ability to deliver the service their customers pay for.
Do Businesses Still Need On-Premises IT Support?
There is still some argument to say that on-premise IT support has its place in business. According to a company we spoke to that specialises in IT support and Microsoft 365 consulting, many of their customers keep their existing in-house IT team, but use their remote IT services to expand the capabilities of their IT department. This type of hybrid IT support might make a lot of sense to many businesses.
