MSPs use a variety of powerful IT tools to offer services to their customers and help small businesses compete against larger industry players. When considering whether a business should outsource its IT department to a managed services provider (MSP), the first step is understanding exactly what an MSP is and what it can do. This guide will explain how MSPs support small businesses, the many benefits of enlisting their services, and why they’re important for economic growth.

According to a report by Google, mobile users abandon webpages if the load time is more than three seconds. In other words, even a fractionally slower website will lead to a bad user experience and increased bounce rates. Today’s users are more demanding and expect near-instantaneous load times and seamless experiences. If you can’t meet their expectations, they’ll find other websites or applications capable of providing a better experience.

IT Service Management (ITSM) strategies and platforms inherently target IT: it’s a part of the acronym! And, the ITSM platform is the bridge between IT and the organization’s employees. Sure, IT is a key player when it comes to connecting employees to services, but they aren’t the only internal service provider who could benefit from streamlining their activities.

When you’re troubleshooting, issues seem to fall into two categories: issues based on an alert or error message where you have a good idea where to start and ones where you have no idea what’s going on. The first issues are usually straightforward. You use the information provided in the alert or error message to search the logs and pull up the relevant event messages.

Ask a hundred IT pros and their managers what “cloud native” is, and you’ll get as many different definitions. In part it’s because public cloud providers (PCPs) seek to provide all things to all IT teams, but it’s also because each organization has different goals for cloud. If I could get away with it, I’d enclose cloud native in quotes whenever it’s unclear what business expectations are for PCPs.

Whether you’re a small business with fewer than 100 employees or a global enterprise with thousands, having an alert system integrated into the service desk can be invaluable. This type of cross-functional integration can trigger automatic incidents in the service desk based on certain monitoring events, particularly issues that impact a significant portion of employees, including critical applications and network infrastructure.

Today, in the fast-paced digital world, it’s crucial for organizations to develop websites that provide a seamless web experience to the users. Companies are investing in tools and infrastructure to ensure their site’s performance is monitored constantly and optimized in real time. Loading time is one of the critical components with an impact on the user experience.

Many organizations across the U.K. are tackling the three main factors behind digital transformation: cloud technology, IoT, and employee mobility. However, one downside to increased digitization is how this opens an organization up to the potential for more cyberattacks, which isn’t too surprising when you consider an expanded digital presence equates to an expanded attack surface.

First, I hate the term “soft” skills. I prefer we call them essential or non-technical skills or even essential non-technical skills, as that would be more accurate and not have implications about difficulty. I firmly believe these skills are crucial even in normal times. As the year wears on and there’s no end in sight for a remote workforce, I want to take a few moments to recognize the importance of these non-technical skills in this environment.

Conferences, while a lot of work, are such a fun outlet to connect with other people in the IT community. It’s an opportunity to learn about new technologies, trends, and gain new perspectives around the industry. Some of my favorite memories of past conferences stem from the exhibit hall passport games and morning coffee breaks, mingling with other attendees whose paths you may not typically cross. Those were the days!

Since the launch of ITIL 4, incorporating DevOps into service management strategy has been a hot topic. On the surface, both DevOps and ITIL are frameworks that can help facilitate successful operations surrounding IT services. But that doesn’t mean that IT pros need to choose one or the other. Like most great marriages, it’s how these two methodologies complement each other that makes them an ideal pair when it comes to ITSM.

APM tools have been formerly and primarily siloed in the application development arena, with only the most important and mission-critical applications having their APM instrumentation extended into production use due to complexity and cost. In the modern world of application monitoring, the requirements for Dev and Ops need to be tightly integrated.

The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (FCCS) makes it clear government agencies have significant responsibilities for protecting cloud-hosted data. The FCCS states the need for agencies to develop their own governance models and create service level agreements to ensure they’ll have continuous access to log data and prompt notification from their cloud service provider if there’s a breach.

Application performance management (APM) involves managing the availability and efficiency of software applications by obtaining and translating IT metrics into business outcomes. Because application performance hiccups are inevitable, it’s crucial to have a robust APM solution in place so IT teams can resolve problems faster and more efficiently, lessening the impact on users and the bottom line. One factor muddling application performance optimization is the speed of change.

Think about your last online order. If you’re a frequent online shopper and have created profiles for sites you visit often (*raises hand*), then you’re probably familiar with customized recommendations. Based on your purchase history, location, and other factors, the website may suggest other items you might be interested in buying. And if you’re on the site long enough, chatbots may appear asking if you have questions or need assistance locating something.

The year 2020 has been a rollercoaster. With nearly every aspect of our daily lives flipped on its head, it’s hard to think of a single thing that went as planned or any of us were prepared for. That is, until it comes to our IT teams. The success of organizations during the reality of an unprecedented global pandemic is due in large part to IT pros’ preparedness and ability to adapt and manage through substantial change.

In the first of these two articles, we covered the first five steps public sector organizations should take to change how they think about their cybersecurity to overcome this challenge. So far, we’ve explored: considering risk, tech environment knowledge, effective cyberhygiene, security at every level, and security as a trust-builder. We’ll continue by looking at the final five steps on this journey to build a stronger security strategy.

Both the technology and infrastructure we use have changed how we deliver services to our customers (or employees in this case). But how are our businesses adapting to these changes? How are we identifying relationships across new environments? Are we understanding the implications of what’s being introduced? In order to keep business applications and operations running smoothly, it’s crucial to understand the value of three key ITIL practices: configuration, change, and release management.

If you’ve run across other articles I’ve written about hybrid cloud, you’ll notice a familiar theme: it’s an artifact of other technology decisions nobody asked for. As such, it’s left up to IT operations to figure out how to know if it’s working well, cost-effectively, or as expected in the first place. However, tools are improving rapidly, and IT teams are gaining skill with the model and technologies.

The U.K. public sector holds some of the most important and sensitive data in the country, from private medical records to military intelligence. Consistently protecting this data is a major priority, which means the IT teams working within the public sector are entrusted with implementing the most effective security measures to prevent attacks or internal mishaps.