A new IDG research report reveals the enterprise trends and strategies around managed IT service adoption in the UK. The survey of more than 200 senior IT decision-makers and influencers commissioned by TelecityGroup, found that a majority of organisations (63%) have identified an opportunity to improve their customer experience through the implementation of managed IT services. Despite clear recognition of the value of managed IT services to the wider business and customer engagement, more than half of the organisations surveyed (51%) are still opting for in-house solutions managed wholly by internal staff.
The new research also reveals that businesses are increasingly prioritising cloud services as they look to outsource IT. With enterprise-wide digital transformation climbing the business agenda, organisations across the country have identified managed private cloud (31%) and public cloud (29%) services as key to enabling a move away from proprietary capex-heavy IT resource planning, to deploy a services-led approach.
“Businesses across the UK have realised that implementing a managed IT services model can significantly accelerate their digital transformation agenda,” said Rob Coupland, Managing Director UK, TelecityGroup. “Strategic technology management through a trusted partner is one of the most effective enablers of improved customer experience, as it puts IT in the hands of the experts, leaving the business to focus on what it does best. For businesses, this means more time and resource can be dedicated to the implementation of new and improved services, or increasing customer-centric initiatives, all to the benefit of the end-user. While a gap clearly exists when it comes to implementing this strategy, it is encouraging to see that more and more businesses are considering managed services as a way of accelerating their digital transformation and, in particular, making important steps towards cloud computing.”
The survey indicates that British businesses are keen to cut costs associated with IT management, while remaining agile to enable a keener focus on the customer experience. For many organisations, IT spending is a necessity rather than a core element of their business. As such, outsourcing these functions to expert providers is an increasing priority, as businesses look to utilise time and resource in a more customer-centric fashion.
The IDG research report is launched alongside TelecityGroup Managed Services proposition in the UK. From data centres to secure cloud services, TelecityGroup’s breadth of services, operational excellence and customer-centricity offer location convenience, extensive coverage, and a rich heritage of continued innovation. The TelecityGroup managed service proposition includes IT data management, software defined networking as well as Network Services and Storage-as-a-Service. With the IDG report suggesting more businesses are looking to utilise managed services as a route to cloud computing, TelecityGroup also offers private and public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) powered via Cloud-IX, a dedicated and secure cloud ecosystem interconnecting private and public infrastructure.
