Should You Hire an Onsite or Remote IT Services Provider in San Antonio?

Business owners are currently facing challenges which have been caused by rapid changes in technology. Granted, in this era, technology plays a crucial role in driving business success and any firm which wishes to bank on these developments must embrace technology or risk being wiped out. If you are among the business owners who are yet to fully embrace technology or you need to upgrade your system, then you have to consult an IT services provider in San Antonio who will guide you on how to go about the whole process. 

Once you have made a decision to outsource your IT services, the next step is to decide on which kind of IT service provider you need. Broadly speaking, you can either hire a remote managed service provider or an onsite managed service provider. To choose effectively, it is important for you to understand the pros and cons of each of them.

Remote Support

When you choose an IT services provider in San Antonio who offers remote support, the MSP will be able to work on your IT system remotely without having to visit your business premises. Remote MSPs can update, upgrade, install, and uninstall software and conduct regular maintenance to your IT system from their offices. The services offered by remote MSPs include cloud-hosted Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), among others.

Pros

• Lower cost – If you decide to hire an IT service provider who offers remote support, you will incur lower costs because engineers will not have to charge you for their transport expenses.
• 24/7 support – You can get on-demand 24/7 support, especially when there is an emergency that needs to be sorted immediately.

Cons

• Connectivity – Remote support depends heavily on the ability of an IT system to connect to the servers of your chosen MSP. In the event of a connection failure, you are likely to face service disruption which can be costly to your business.
• Security – If you happen to receive remote support via the phone, there are risks that fraudsters can masquerade themselves and defraud your employees by getting illegal access to your computer systems. Always make sure that you authenticate and verify the identity of the MSP when they call you or your employees.

Onsite Support

This is IT support that is offered by the MSP at your business premises or on a site owned by you. The MSP might be embedded at your facility and work independently alongside your IT staff or the engineer may be traveling to your site on a need-basis. 

Pros

• Efficiency – Onsite support means that the engineer can respond faster to any IT issue that requires to be attended to.
• Ease of access – The engineer can also troubleshoot the devices for problems faster when working onsite.

Con

• Expensive – Having an MSP travel to your business premise can be expensive in the long run.

Conclusion

There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to MSPs. At ICS, we are an IT services provider in San Antonio that offers both remote and 2-hours-per-month onsite support. Contact us today and let us be your MSP of choice.

Jason Simons

ICS is a Texas-based 40-year-old technology company specializing in Managed IT, VoIP, Video Conferencing and Video Surveillance solutions for US and International businesses. ICS has over 4000 regional installations and specializes in multi-site businesses between 25 and 2500 employees. ICS’s customers enjoy the experience of ICS’s Total Care program which provides clients flat fee services with obsolescence and growth protection. Whether a customer elects to deploy their IT, Video Conferencing or VoIP in the cloud or on the customer’s premise, ICS can provide a full turn-key solution for our clients under one flat monthly fee.