What You Need To Know Before You Hire a Managed Services Partner

Your Shopping List for Hiring A Managed Services Partner

Technology is constantly evolving and we’ve come a long way since your in-house IT department could handle managing your network. That’s why it’s time to consider switching over to a managed services partner to keep you up and running. 

To us, there’s a big difference between hiring someone to be your managed services provider and hiring a dedicated team of experienced professionals to be your partner as you update your network to be more robust and faster. 

That’s why there are specific qualifications you need to look for when you’re bringing in a new partner. Here are some things you should look for when shopping for a managed services partner:

1. Core Technical Competency The team you hire should have the certifications to show they’re not just an infrastructure-level expert. They’re experts on the application level as well.
2. Application Development & Integration Hosting your network is easy enough but what you really want is a company that can know software development, too, so they have a better understanding of the technology to support your business. 
3. Fixed Costs Some providers operated on a fluctuating pricing model. They charge separately for infrastructure, support, application lifecycle management, etc., which makes your monthly costs unpredictable and difficult to forecast. Make sure to pick a partner with pricing models that work for you. Read on to see how Addteq can help in optimizing OPEX with flexible pricing models.   

Once a potential partner passes the first test with these qualifications, you also need to look at what kind of support is being offered to ensure your network stays up and you stay in business. 

Managed Service Above and Beyond – The Addteq Difference

At Addteq, we know how critical it is for you to stay productive. If you’re not working, you’re not making money. That’s why Codefactori offers an industry-leading service level agreement (SLA) that provides you with a guaranteed 99.95% availability of hosting services with 24x7x365 monitoring. Plus, for the standard SLA that automatically comes with Codefactori, we offer:

1. Incremental backup, including system recovery, every 60 minutes.
2. Recovery time objective (RTO) of 4 hours or less.
3. Recovery point objective (RPO) within 1 hour.
4. Technical support for 16 hours a day every weekday, excluding U.S. holidays.

For smaller companies, The standard SLA is a great option regardless of industry or market. 

For larger enterprises or companies that operate internationally, our platinum-level SLA takes our support to an entirely new level of service with some special features not available in the standard offering:

1. Incremental backup, including system recovery, every 30 minutes.
2. RTO of 2 hours or less.
3. RPO within 30 minutes.
4. Technical support 24×7, excluding U.S. holidays.
5. Custom domain name which allows you to use your own SSL certification.
6. Direct database access (read-only).
7. Expandable disk storage.
8. LDAP integration.

If you’re already signed up for a standard SLA and you need to upgrade to platinum, no worries. You can upgrade at any time with a simple call to your Addteq representative. 

No Need for Panic, Codefactori Has all the Information on Managed Services

No matter how careful you are or how robust your network is, the simple fact is that issues do come up. To support you, Addteq easily identifies and places issues into one of four categories: 

1. Incidents: Planning for the Unexpected In Your IT Service

Incidents are unplanned interruptions or reductions in your IT service. They occur when there’s a failure of an asset before it can impact your service and can be resolved with a workaround until the cause is discovered and resolved. Examples of incidents include:

• Application is slow to respond. Restarting the application may be a temporary workaround.
• Expiration of SSL certificate is causing a change for every customer.
• Disk space running out.

2. Problem: Seeing the Big Picture in Managed Services

A problem is the cause of one or more incidents and is often discovered through the problem management process. Examples of problems may include:

• Application is slow to respond for multiple customers. FInding & remediating the root cause of the problem is necessary.
• Disk space runs out almost every other month for a particular application server

3. Activities: Shifting Software Processes for a Better Cloud Environment

Activities are a collection of hardware or software documentation and processes required to implement changes to your IT services. These changes are managed, tested, and deployed as a single entity. A few examples of activities include:

• System needs to be restarted as part of your standard maintenance procedures.
• Application needs to be upgraded as part of the standard upgrade process. 
• Emergency patch needs to be applied for OS or application CVE. 

4. Changes: Small Adjustments to IT Services, Large Impact to Your Organization

A change is an addition, modification, or removal of anything that could affect your IT services, processes, or documentation. Changes include:

• Updates to system configuration to improve performance.
• Process change to apply upgrades to reduce downtimes.
• Updates to resolve problems and improve customer experience. 

Managed Services Provider vs. Managed Services Partner: What’s Better for Your Cloud Environment?

Every organization is different and so are their unique needs. To help organizations thrive in their respected industries and markets, there are a variety of managed service providers available. However, there’s only one that’s capable of being your managed service partner. 

Addteq is proud to be an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner – Atlassian’s highest tier of partnership. To achieve this, each member of our technical team had to earn multiple certifications from Atlassian. This created a team that not only knows how your infrastructure works, but how applications will respond once they’re in your network. we should also highlight our broader non-Atlassian DevOps partnership and competency In addition to providing managed hosting, we also develop apps for the Atlassian Marketplace and follow Atlassian’s schedule of critical updates and patches. This helps us keep your network and applications up-to-date and secure. 

With our expertise in Atlassian tools, integration, and extensibility, we understand the technical ability of your network applications, as well as the context of how you’ll use them. This gives us a unique perspective to provide you with a level of service that supports you more effectively through all of your business endeavors. With our fixed cost pricing, you’ll save each month compared to other service providers. We utilize a more cost-effective hosting environment in order to minimize costs giving you one of the biggest ROIs we can provide. 

So the only thing left to say is, what are you waiting for? Call us so you can work with a partner that truly understands your unique needs to keep your business running.