For the past two weeks, I’ve been meeting with IT Managers and Directors for medium to large companies in different industries. I enjoy the opportunity to present our managed services solution to these technical folks whenever I can. They are the men and women in the trenches that deal with the daily IT issues, who understand how IT Vizion’s processes and people could have a positive impact on their overworked and under budgeted department.

In this blog, I briefly want to answer a question that seems to always come up which is “How does IT Vizion do IT?”. Our approach is Agent based. Basically a small client install has to happen on every desktop, laptop or server that we will help manage. These installs do not require reboots. Once installed, the Agent communicates via TCP/IP to our remote Datacenter server. The server sends down command primitives to the Agent to perform rudimentary tasks such as writing a file, getting a file, executing a file, auditing the hardware and software on the PC, prompting a user with question and waiting for a response, rebooting, monitoring resources, and more. These rudimentary commands are combined to perform management tasks, such as remote controlling the PC, deploying patches, monitoring the resource utilization of the PC, installing programs, enforcing policies, and more.

That’s a high level overview of how our process works. Because of the secure communication that happens between your systems and datacenter our server, we are able to have an up-to-date inventory of your IT assets (hardware, software). We eliminate the need to have 3rd party tools deployed and managed within your environment. Some typical systems that we can replace as part of our integrated system include:

1. Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
2. System Center Configuration Manager (SMS Server replacement)
3. 3rd party Ticketing systems
4. 3rd party Monitoring systems (such as System Center Operations Manager)

The concept of managed services does appeal to most IT Managers. Because it effectively enables them to offload a portion of their IT operations without relinquishing full control as they would in traditional outsourcing arrangements that lead to the transfer of the assets to an outside vendor. It boils down to the fact that the Executive Management is no longer satisfied with their current IT suppliers reacting to problems. They “expect” a proactive approach.

By partnering with IT Vizion, the overworked and overstretched IT Manager gains an upper hand in managing their heterogeneous environment, while increasing both customer satisfaction and greater visibility of their IT department. After all, shouldn’t your role as IT Manager be enjoyable and satisfying? I mean most IT Executives become IT Managers because they do what they love. Work with technology and see the superior results when applied to their organization’s business processes. Allow us to make it more enjoyable…

If you’re an IT Manager or Director, what concerns do you have about managed services? I’d be happy to respond.