IT Support: should it be done in-house or outsourced?

It's a perennial issue that, strangely, is getting easier to answer. The reason is that good IT Support is getting harder to deliver.

Consider the modern requirement:

Data is moving into the Cloud, so IT Support has to understand the Cloud, Cloud computing, and multiple international data compliance regulations.

The IT infrastructure is increasingly virtualised - which means homogeneity of systems is no longer an issue and companies are buying the best or cheapest product regardless of manufacturer.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is increasingly becoming a reality that most businesses must face - and in many people's view should be encouraged; which means that IT Support must understand Windows in the office, OSX at home, and iOS and Android for the commute.

And then there's security. SMBs are quite simply poorly served by the security industry, which tends to concentrate on the consumer or the enterprise - it means that IT Support has to provide as much home-brewed security as possible, and be knowledgeable about what it cannot.

What all of this means is that modern IT Support for the average SMB has to be expert in Cloud, virtualisation, multiple hardware manufacturers, multiple operating systems and be a security expert to boot.

Quite simply, this is far too expensive for the average SMB, which really needs to spend its resources on business expansion or business survival. The decision is no longer whether to do IT Support in-house or outsource it, but a choice between gaps in support or doing it properly.

But it gets worse. If you choose to employ enough highly qualified IT staff to cover all of these different areas, you will, according to Aberdeen - probably only get around 60% staff utilisation. For 40% of their time, you will be paying for these expensive specialists to do nothing of any value to your business.

But when you outsource, you pay for what you get; whether that's strictly by time or on a pre-determined basis.

Whatever way you look at it, outsourcing IT Support will let you tap a wider source of expertise far more cheaply than you can do it in-house.
And with business no longer supported by IT, but increasingly reliant upon it, then failure in any area of cloud, hardware, BYOD or security could be catastrophic. There is no longer a logical argument for in-house IT Support for the SMB - it has to be outsourced.

Many businesses find themselves chasing their tails in an IT Support 'break-fix' scenario. It's a behaviour that is best avoided.