When it is time to set up a development team, a company can either choose to partner with a managed service provider or choose to set up an in-house IT team.

With advantages and disadvantages on both sides, managers must choose what will work best for the business. For that, they have to consider the business needs and overall goals, budget, the support they will need in the future, and much closer to the project they want to be.

In this article, we’ll analyse the pros and cons of choosing either managed service providers or an in-house IT team.

Managed service providers – what is it and how they can help your business

Managed service providers may help businesses by providing IT services for reduced costs compared to the costs businesses would have with an in-house team. After all, it is no mistake that the market for these types of companies is growing exponentially.

Given that these providers are third-party companies, one might think the opposite. But almost everything that managed service providers can offer would be much harder to have in an in-house team.

In this sense, a managed service provider is a company that partners with another to manage their IT systems and infrastructure. These businesses usually have several services they offer, from security to a data centre, passing through network services and even ongoing customer support.

In addition, these providers can also help to augment teams, to plan the operations in detail, to prepare for the next step in the plan and to write overall documentation.

With a managed service provider, companies can, therefore, expect to have more time to focus on their core operations and business.

The benefits of choosing managed service providers

Choosing a managed service provider can be truly beneficial for a company, especially because part of its operations is managed by a third party and it can focus on designing a business strategy and producing innovative products or delivering pioneering services.

Besides this, some benefits of choosing these partners are:

• Access to emergent technologies, like AI, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, Big Data, among others.
• Customer support whenever it is needed.
• Reduced costs, as these providers are known for minimizing in-house costs by 40%, due to making these costs variable in contrast to the fixed costs with an in-house IT team.
• Access to highly qualified and trained IT professionals, either to develop a solution, to help set a solution up or even just for IT support.
• Reduced development and deployment time, ending up with increased efficiency and accelerated time-to-market without losing the product’s quality.
• Enhanced security, due to additional services like data monitoring, backups, protection services, and more.
• Flexible and agile teams, with strategies like team augmentation, that make a company more adaptable to the IT market.

Why choosing an in-house IT team

As the name states, an in-house IT team is an internal team responsible for planning and implementing an IT strategy either for software development, cybersecurity, IT infrastructure or data management.

The biggest advantage of choosing an in-house IT team instead of a managed service provider is the proximity to the project itself. And, with proximity, comes the control a company have over the management of the IT infrastructure. Other benefits of an in-house IT team include:

• Quicker response times since an internal team can respond immediately to almost any technical issues. This leads to reduced downtime and damage.
• Possibility to create more tailored solutions since these teams are used to the infrastructure and know it in detail.
• Customed training programs, for the teams to be specialized in solving the issues the company needs the most.
• Quick access to equipment if the in-house team needs to solve any physical problems.

Conclusion

When deciding to hire a managed service provider or to set up an in-house IT team, companies need to mind their needs while considering the advantages of both modalities.

A managed service provider, for instance, can help businesses reduce around 40% of the overall costs, as they also have access to a larger talent pool, filled with highly qualified personnel.

Setting up an in-house IT team, in turn, has more costs – especially with payroll, ongoing training, and benefits, among others -, but it allows businesses to be closer and have more control over the project.

The choice between one or another will always be taken by the company itself after it considers its budget, the support required, overall business needs and how much proximity it needs.