The Value of Proactive Monitoring vs. Reactive Repair
Hiring an IT company to be in charge of proactive monitoring is highly beneficial for businesses. Proactive monitoring means that the IT company will receive a notification whenever an event in the systems occurs that needs attention. The IT company will then work to resolve the issue before it becomes a large crisis for the business.
The benefits of having this level of monitoring include:
- Improved productivity –Most problems will warrant a warning sign before it becomes critical. If you check the event logs of any unmonitored server, there will most likely be more than a couple red X’s that warrant some level of attention. Same goes for an unmonitored backup system, or an AntiVirus system that hasn’t updated in weeks.
Any one of these examples, and numerous others, if gone unchecked can develop into a crisis resulting in serious and possibly unrecoverable losses to productivity and to the finances of the company. Proactive monitoring gives you the ability to prevent these unexpected emergencies.Proactive monitoring also allows for improved performance on a day-to-day basis. Too often, performance of equipment is allowed to degrade to the point where the device is no longer functional.
- Improved reliability –If small problems can be identified and corrected before they have a chance to develop into larger problems, you will not need to worry about glitches in your systems. Since the monitoring is done by an outside company remotely, you will not be interrupted with computer/software issues.Often times, the IT company can be notified of an issue, and correct the issue without the company ever knowing anything was done to their system. This allows for seamless corrections which means the company won’t have to be halted by system errors.
- Saving Money –Hiring reactive support for a crisis situation can result in an unexpectedly high invoice. This is a tough situation for a company, especially considering the loss of profit that resulted from the downtime that occurred from the system crisis.Some people think that reactive repair is better than proactive monitoring because you are only paying someone when you need their assistance, however there are other aspects of the situation that they are not considering. Only having reactive repair means that there will be downtime in the business when a crisis strikes. It also means that all systems may begin running slowly due to smaller issues that have not become a large crisis yet. Both of those situations results in slower productivity for the business which means lower profits.
All things considered, a proactive monitoring plan should be easily justified as a valuable and cost-effective option for a company. The loss of profit and productivity that is experienced from a network/server crash can be detrimental for a company, and proactive monitoring can eliminate downtime by preventing the issues from reaching a critical level.