What Are Managed Network Services and Why Do Businesses Need Them?

In an era where digital infrastructure forms the backbone of modern business operations, the cost of maintaining an in-house IT team has become increasingly challenging. According to recent industry data, network downtime costs businesses an average of $5,600 per minute, while IT professionals command median base salaries of $130,000 a year and multiple specialized experts are needed to effectively manage complex networks. 

As organizations face mounting pressure to ensure 24/7 network reliability while controlling costs, managed network services have emerged as a strategic approach revolutionizing how they handle IT infrastructure.

Managed network services represent a fundamental shift from traditional in-house IT management to a more efficient, expertise-driven model. This evolution in network management isn’t just about cost savings—it’s about accessing specialized knowledge, enhanced security protocols, and round-the-clock network monitoring without the overhead of a full-time IT department. As businesses face mounting technological complexities and cybersecurity challenges, managed network services are a crucial solution for organizations of all sizes.

Understanding Managed Network Services

Managed network services (MNS) refers to outsourcing IT network management to a managed service provider (MSP). These providers may offer other IT management services as well. The MNS portion of the service includes network monitoring, management, and maintenance services. The contracted company will also stay on top of security and compliance issues.

Managed Network Services vs. Traditional Network Services

By opting for a Managed Services Provider (MSP) for network management, businesses not only save money on IT costs but also gain access to specialized expertise. Managed service providers play a crucial role in the technology services market by enabling businesses to achieve digital transformation and focus on strategic initiatives. 

With traditional network services, a business must hire IT staff and manage its infrastructure in-house. This puts extra strain on management by creating a new team they must oversee. It puts pressure on finances, too, as that team needs to be paid for full-time work. Managed Network Services solve this problem by providing companies with just the labor they need and outsourcing the responsibility for that labor.

Managed Network Services Model

When a company hires a managed network services provider, the MSP will take over responsibility for the infrastructure. This model typically comes in the form of a subscription service. Companies pay a monthly fee in exchange for the network’s day-to-day operations. 

The MSP will handle all management and maintenance tasks required to keep the system performing securely and efficiently. This single, affordable monthly fee replaces all the headaches of managing an in-house IT team.

Benefits of Managed Network Services

We’ve seen how managed network services allow a business to save time and money. Managed service providers (MSPs) continuously adapt their services in response to emerging technologies, enhancing IT infrastructure and maintaining a competitive edge. Now let’s look at how the services provided will enable a company to thrive.

Focus on Core Business

When you start a business, you aren’t creating it to manage IT infrastructure. You’re starting it to provide your customers with a specific product or service. As the business grows, the support staff required to provide that product or service grows with it, often including roles unrelated to the business’s primary focus. 

Managing these additional roles can be time-consuming and distracting for upper management. Solution providers, such as MSPs and ASPs, have emerged to offer specialized services, streamlining the management of IT infrastructure and connectivity for customers.

Enhanced Security

Cybersecurity threats have reached unprecedented levels, with attempted ransomware attacks occurring every 11 seconds and the average cost of a data breach reaching $4.35 million in 2023. With all their financial resources, even the world’s largest companies are susceptible to these threats. Major enterprises continue to face sophisticated attacks targeting cloud infrastructure, IoT devices, and supply chain vulnerabilities, resulting in leaked trade secrets, compromised customer data, and devastating reputational damage.

Related: Why Your Business Needs an MSP: 5 Key Benefits

While the most significant companies can weather the storm, most businesses will struggle to recover from such a breach. The importance of having a team of experts matching the skill and sophistication of would-be attackers can’t be overstated. 

The staff securing your network needs to be the best of the best. Otherwise, your business could suffer a data breach that puts both your customers and your company at risk. By outsourcing this responsibility to a company whose core competency is network management and security, you can relieve yourself of that distraction. You can spend more time and money on what your customers are paying you for.

Improved Network Reliability and Uptime

Security isn’t the only concern when managing a network, of course. With 94% of enterprises now utilizing cloud services and the average organization using 36 cloud based services per day, businesses increasingly rely on robust connectivity—even those who don’t rely on devices within the company to connect to one another.

When something goes wrong and those devices can’t communicate how they need to, productivity can come to a halt. Employees can no longer access important files, customers can’t access your website or complete the actions they want to, and your entire communications infrastructure may go down with the network.

In other words, network downtime is a big deal. Keeping it up requires sophisticated networking technologies and monitoring tools that can alert IT staff to the problem—and a team of experts who can quickly resolve the issue. Again, we see the importance of having the best in managing your infrastructure. An MNS provider is well qualified to know what that entails, hire the best people, and provide them with the best tools.

Scalability

Your business needs are dynamic: as your company grows, it stands to reason that your network needs will grow with it. But that isn’t all of the equation. There may be times of heavy usage when you need more capacity and times of reduced capacity when you need less. When hiring your own IT staff, you can’t add and remove team members as frequently as your needs may change. 

The scalability of staff is a substantial cost factor, but the scalability of the infrastructure matters as well. Creating a network that can scale quickly when demand increases requires skill and planning. Without a properly configured system, you could end up with a network that goes down right when you need it the most.

Not only are managed network services easy to scale up and down by altering your plan, but the experts who work for them can help ensure that your infrastructure is optimized for scalability. Once again, you benefit from their expertise in choosing and setting up tools and managing the network.

Cost Savings

Nearly every benefit mentioned above translates into cost savings as well. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) utilize their own data centers to host enterprise network services and virtual network functions, ensuring high performance and quality. Two costs are associated with maintaining an in-house IT department for network infrastructure: staff and tools. 

Hiring an expert staff to take on this critical role is expensive in its own right, but they can only adequately perform their job if they are supplied with the latest tools and technologies. An additional expense you may find yourself with is the cost of ongoing training. The networking landscape moves quickly, and you’ll want your staff to remain on top of those changes.

Hiring a managed services provider enables you to bundle everything into an affordable package. You’ll get a fixed monthly fee that’s easier to budget for than the often unpredictable world of network management otherwise would be. Along with those lower management costs, you’ll gain additional cost savings by reducing downtime and the associated loss of productivity.

Features of Managed Network Services

When you sign up with a managed services provider, you’ll get access to several critical network management and maintenance features.

Network Monitoring

Networks are busy. At any given time, important data could be flowing through them. Data that can seriously impede business processes if it doesn’t arrive. Yet, networks aren’t infallible. Sometimes they go down. To minimize the impact of lost data, they need to be monitored constantly. 

Modern enterprise network management requires sophisticated monitoring tools and dedicated expertise to ensure continuous uptime and performance optimization. While plenty of advanced tools can automate that process, you’ll need access to those tools. Importantly, you’ll also need access to an expert who can be alerted and intervene when there’s a problem. This makes monitoring one of the most essential features of managed network services.

MSPs use a range of tools and technologies to monitor networks. With a mixture of software and hardware, the MSP can have a real-time view of all the networks under their care. In addition to these tools, MSPs have highly skilled professionals capable of spotting potential problems early on and stopping them before they become an issue. 

Network Management

Network management includes day-to-day tasks such as configuration, optimization, monitoring, and troubleshooting. In addition to required daily tasks, network management addresses what happens after a problem is detected and one-off tasks such as configuring new devices or software.

Just as identifying the problems requires great skill, so does addressing them. The staff at an MNS provider spends all day every day working with networks from a variety of customers. This gives them insight and experience that even the best employees can’t gain from working at a single location. Their breadth of experience ensures a more efficiently managed network and smoother day-to-day operations.

Network Maintenance

Daily monitoring keeps a network healthy, but regular maintenance is also needed. Software companies release patches that must be promptly installed as bugs are identified and squashed. Sometimes, hardware fails and needs to be replaced. 

Other times, it’s simply too outdated to perform the job at a modern standard. All of this ongoing upkeep requires someone to stay on top of the necessary changes and implement them when needed. Otherwise, a once secure and reliable network will become more of a liability than an asset. 

Thankfully, maintenance is one of the standard features managed network service providers offer. Their team of experts will handle all the hardware and software upgrades your system needs and perform any routine maintenance tasks required. 

Network Security

A lack of adequately applied software patches can cause much more than an unreliable network. Many of these patches are designed to fix security holes. Worse, every would-be cyber criminal knows about the exploit once the patch is released. 

If you don’t apply the patches quickly, your systems become a haven for every cyber attacker wishing to harm you. Should they succeed, your sensitive data, or that of your customers, could be made public.

A well-managed network service provider will do much more than apply patches when they come due. They’ll monitor the latest cybersecurity news and understand threats as soon as they’re known. This allows them to proactively take steps to keep your networks more secure and keep your data away from prying eyes that shouldn’t have access to it.

Choosing the Right Managed Network Services Provider

Not all managed network service providers are created equal. Even among top-tier providers, you want to find one that fits your specific needs and goals well. Finding the right provider comes down to knowing what to look for and what questions to ask.

Factors to Consider 

• Expertise and Experience. One of the benefits is that MSPs have highly skilled IT staff that would be difficult to hire. This advantage goes away if their staff still needs those qualifications. 
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Before signing an agreement with any provider, you should understand the terms you’re getting into. This is especially true for something as important as network management.
• Security Measures. Given the threat cyber attacks pose, it’s essential to understand what plans are in place for avoiding them and how to handle the situation should one occur.
• Cost. Most providers will have a simple monthly fee. Regardless of the pricing structure, it’s essential to understand what you’ll be paying and what you’ll be getting for that price.

These factors work together to create a complete picture of what you can expect from your managed network services partnership. While cost is certainly important, it should be weighed against the provider’s expertise, security capabilities, and ability to meet your specific business requirements through comprehensive SLAs. The goal is to find a provider who offers the optimal balance of all these factors while aligning with your organization’s long-term technological vision and growth objectives.

Ten Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Managed Network Services Provider

To properly evaluate the factors above, you need to know where each provider you’re considering stands on them. As we’ve seen, the MNS provider you choose will have extensive ramifications on the health of your business. 

Understanding how each candidate aligns with your business, its needs, and its goals is essential. Below are ten questions to help you evaluate their alignment with your needs and capacity to do the job.

What specific managed services do you offer? 

Understanding the full scope of services helps you ensure the provider can meet both your current and future needs. Beyond basic network monitoring, you’ll want to know if they offer services like cloud integration, cybersecurity, disaster recovery, and strategic IT consulting.

What experience do you have working with businesses in my industry?

Industry-specific experience matters because different sectors have unique compliance requirements, security needs, and operational demands. A provider familiar with your industry will understand these nuances and can implement solutions that align with industry best practices.

What is your average response time for resolving issues? 

Response time directly impacts your business continuity. Ask about their tiered response system—how quickly they respond to critical issues versus minor ones – and get specific metrics about their mean time to resolution (MTTR) for different types of problems.

What are the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) you offer? 

SLAs should clearly define performance metrics, uptime guarantees, and remediation processes. Look for specific commitments regarding network availability, problem resolution timeframes, and compensation terms if service levels aren’t met.

What is your pricing structure, and how is it determined? 

Understanding the pricing model helps avoid surprises. Ask about base fees, additional service costs, scalability options, and whether prices adjust based on usage or user count. Also inquire about any potential hidden costs or fees for emergency services.

What security measures do you have in place to protect my data? 

The provider should detail their multi-layered security approach, including encryption methods, access controls, security certifications, compliance standards, and incident response procedures. Ask specifically about their approach to emerging threats.

Can you provide references from current or past clients? 

Speaking with existing clients, particularly those in similar industries or with comparable network complexity, can provide valuable insights into the provider’s reliability, communication style, and problem-solving capabilities.

How do you handle backups and disaster recovery? 

A robust disaster recovery plan should include regular backup procedures, multiple backup locations, recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), and regular testing of recovery procedures.

Do you offer 24/7 support? 

Round-the-clock support is crucial for maintaining business continuity. Understand their support structure, including how after-hours support is handled, what communication channels are available, and whether support is outsourced or handled by internal teams.

What is your process for onboarding new clients? 

The onboarding process reveals how organized and thorough the provider is. Look for a structured approach that includes network assessment, documentation, knowledge transfer, and minimal disruption to your operations during the transition.

By thoroughly exploring these questions with potential managed network service providers, you’ll gain crucial insights into their capabilities, reliability, and fit for your organization. The answers will reveal not just their technical expertise, but also their communication style, problem-solving approach, and commitment to customer success. Remember that the right provider should feel like a true technology partner invested in your business outcomes, not just another vendor.

Let BCM One Manage Your Network

Selecting a managed network services provider is a strategic decision that impacts every aspect of your business operations. The right provider delivers more than just network management—they become a trusted partner in your organization’s growth and technological evolution. 

With the complexity of modern networks and the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats, having an experienced, proactive managed services partner is no longer optional for businesses seeking to maintain competitive advantage.

BCM One provides comprehensive networking solutions and a team of experts and over 30 years of successful deployments. This makes us uniquely qualified to handle the pain points that your business is having. We can assess your current situation, make recommendations for the solutions you need, and provide those services with a team of industry experts who know every part of building and maintaining efficient and secure networks. To learn more, contact us today.