Educational institutions encounter numerous challenges in upholding resilient IT infrastructures that cater to the increasing requirements of students, faculty, and administrators. From ensuring seamless connectivity to safeguarding sensitive data, many educational organizations need help keeping pace with demands, whether that’s limited resources or expertise. This is where Managed Service Providers come into play. MSPs enable educational institutions to leverage cutting-edge technology while mitigating risks and optimizing resources through hardware options and strategic partnerships. Curious about how an MSP relationship could benefit your campus or institution? Let’s look at the five key benefits of managed IT services for the education sector.
Enhanced Network Reliability & Connectivity
COVID dramatically changed digital learning environments and hybrid learning models. A robust network infrastructure facilitates uninterrupted learning experiences for students and educators alike. Whether back in the classroom, working in a hybrid environment, or still fully online, your network reliability and connectivity for staff and students is paramount. Managed IT Services can provide:
- Full-scale management of your network components from routers, firewalls, to load balancers takes the pressure off your IT staff by providing security and reliability while simultaneously garnering trust from your users.
- Seamless connectivity through WAPs, VPNs, and End User Devices allows staff and students the flexibility to collaborate in a variety of learning environments and access libraries, resources and communication portals.
Improved Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
Whether you are reeling from a cyber-attack or need to restore information in the event of a natural calamity, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions are critical to the integrity of your systems and access for users. Having a robust plan enables restoration of access to data, resources and collaboration so that staff and students suffer as little disruption and data loss as possible. A Managed Services Team will:
- Assess your current disaster recovery plans and operating procedures to determine the efficiency of your redundancies and the frequency of backups. Then, prepare tailored disaster recovery strategies, setting clear recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) to prevent data loss and restore your staff and student access as quickly as possible.
- Analyze the ramifications of data loss within your organization and develop comprehensive procedures for system restoration. Delineate the roles and responsibilities of your crisis management team, whether internal, external or a combination.
- Perform Disaster Simulation and Testing and continue that practice yearly to uncover any unforeseen weaknesses.
- Test your planning and systems annually through a disaster simulation and trial recovery to uncover any unforeseen weaknesses.
Faster Adoption of Technologies:
By partnering with industry experts, you can access custom educational IT solutions that can be tailored to your school’s unique requirements. A Managed Services Team can:
- Keep software and hardware up to date through lifecycle management programs. This will ensure your school’s compliance with all regulatory requirements, licensing and updates.
- Deploy an emergency notification communication system to provide school districts and campuses with messaging as simple as event announcements to emergency alert situations.
- Deploy 24/7 monitoring to protect your network and provide seamless access for your staff and students to all the tools they need as they grow and learn.
Better Scalability of IT Solutions:
Educational institutions can quickly scale their IT infrastructure by leveraging MSP solutions and partnerships. Managed IT services teams can accommodate your growth needs and fluctuations on-demand throughout the academic year by:
- Implementing Cloud Migration which increases flexibility and scalability of your IT structure ensuring student and staff resources are easily accessible, and growth is manageable.
- Providing cost savings through our DIR designation so that new technologies can be deployed as soon as they become available.
Reduce Costs & Better Allocate Budgets:
Managed IT services provide cost-effective educational IT solutions to schools with tight budgets, giving them access to collective IT support beyond their financial means. This allows education system leaders to:
- Optimize resource allocation and reduce cost by accessing our DIR for Managed Services. Benefit from the time and money you save by letting experts handle the job, then redirect those savings towards your core educational initiatives.
- Put the bandwidth and expertise of a dedicated MSP to work for you. Whether your educational IT solution involves managing your data, keeping your licenses in place, ensuring compliance, providing security, providing disaster recovery and business continuity, or all of the above, using an MSP will save you precious time and money.
Managed IT services deliver transformative solutions to educational institutions by addressing the multifaceted challenges of maintaining efficient and reliable IT infrastructures. Whether you have decided to completely outsource all your IT or have only a few areas that need attention, our Managed Services Team at Computer Solutions can help.
Contact us today to learn more about how our Managed IT Services Team can relieve any IT burdens and allow you to focus on the product you are ultimately responsible for: the students.
