{"id":22068,"date":"2018-10-09T10:17:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T09:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=22068"},"modified":"2018-10-09T15:12:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T14:12:51","slug":"local-it-market-sees-rise-of-simplicity-as-a-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2018\/10\/09\/local-it-market-sees-rise-of-simplicity-as-a-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Local IT market sees rise of \u2018simplicity as a service’, says Itec expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opinion piece by Gavin Meyer, Executive Director at Itec South Africa.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who\u2019d want to be a CIO or CTO in 2018? They\u2019re being bombarded by an avalanche of new technologies and business approaches that are demanding their attention. Mobility, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Digital Transformation, Disruption and Innovation.<\/p>\n

And while they\u2019re busy trying to take advantage of the genuine business opportunities that all this new technology brings, someone has to keep the lights on and the telephones, security, content management, CRM and ERP working. To make things worse, many businesses have multiple systems and vendors, each with their strategy and approach, which take a huge amount of time to manage.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to bring simplicity to a complicated, noisy technology environment \u2013 and increasing numbers of CIOs agree. Demand for managed business services is on the rise among local businesses, who don\u2019t have the time or resources to deal with numerous IT vendors, but also can\u2019t afford technology outages, and the effects these outages would have on business operations, productivity and revenue.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that actual IT operations are getting any simpler. But by outsourcing their IT to a trusted managed service provider, businesses are outsourcing both the service and the ownership of that service, so there\u2019s a clear line of accountability.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Gavin Meyer, Executive Director at Itec South Africa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The three biggest benefits to businesses of using a managed service provider are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Lower IT costs.<\/strong> A long-term partnership with a trusted provider saves money across the board by ensuring IT systems are updated and operating at the optimal level, reducing hardware costs, maintaining security, and freeing up staff to focus on customers and execution<\/li>\n
  • Increased productivity and efficiency.<\/strong>By taking a proactive approach to IT management, managed service providers take care of problems before they happen. The result: less downtime, and businesses that can focus on their work and increase their productivity<\/li>\n
  • Greater peace of mind.<\/strong> In today\u2019s business environment, maintaining regulatory compliance and cybersecurity are critical. Security and data compliance is a discussion we\u2019re having with 80% of our customers right now. It affects every business, and every part of the business \u2013 even linking back to your suppliers and your staff. Managed service providers take this pain away as part of their offering<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong>Beyond these benefits, good managed services providers act as virtual CIOs, helping the business make the most of technologies like cloud, mobile device management, and next generation security solutions. It\u2019s all about being an IT partner to the business and cutting through the clutter. That\u2019s where the real value of outsourcing your IT comes in.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Opinion piece by Gavin Meyer, Executive Director at Itec South Africa.\u00a0 Who\u2019d want to be a CIO or CTO in 2018? They\u2019re being bombarded by an avalanche of new technologies and business approaches that are demanding their attention. Mobility, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Digital Transformation, Disruption and Innovation. And while they\u2019re busy trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":22070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,134,6,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-blog","category-insights","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22068"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22073,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22068\/revisions\/22073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}