Staff Augmentation vs Managed Services: What Are the Differences?
A recent study suggests IT spending is going to hit $4.4 trillion in 2022.
If you’re thinking about spending more money on IT, you’ll probably need to bring in some form of outsourced help. If that’s the case, you’ll need to decide whether you’re going to invest in staff augmentation or managed services.
This post will help you understand what these terms mean and how you can pick the right option. Once you’ve finished this post, you’ll know where you stand in regards to staff augmentation vs managed services.
Let’s begin!
Why Do You Need Any of These Options?
To begin with, let’s take a look at why you’ll need to use either of these options. If we don’t cover this, it will be hard to understand the staff augmentation vs managed services debate and how it all affects you.
Right, so when launching an IT project, you will need to invest money into the project. Some of this money is going to be spent on software and hardware, but a lot of it will be spent on labor.
Now, sometimes you can hire people for this project and bring them on as long-term, in-house employees. But, a lot of companies don’t like doing this for IT projects as these people will just leave or be fired once the project ends.
On top of that, if you hire employees for IT projects, you will have to train them and manage them. This can all be very time-consuming and expensive in and of itself.
Following this, a lot of companies prefer to bring in outside contractors. These contractors normally come from an agency that specializes in IT work.
The companies that supply these contractors will make sure the people are fully trained. They’ll also manage these people, to make sure they’re doing their job properly.
In any case, once you decide you’re going to use external help, you really only have two options to pick from, managed services or staff augmentation.
Thus, in the rest of this post, we’re going to cover the staff augmentation vs managed services debate, and how you can pick the right approach.
What Is Staff Augmentation?
To begin with, let’s try to answer the question ‘what is staff augmentation?’
Now, this concept sounds a little complicated, but it’s not as sophisticated as it seems, so don’t worry. Essentially, with this approach, you’re bringing in outside staff that can help you with a very specific IT project or issue.
For instance, you might find that you can’t get your servers to integrate with a certain form of software. You might’ve asked your internal IT staff to tackle this issue, but you may find that nobody knows how to address the problem.
In a situation like this, you will often need to invest in staff augmentation.
To do this, you’ll need to find a company that offers staff augmentation as a service, and you’ll need to explain your IT challenge to them. During this initial consultation, you’ll be able to figure out if they can help you.
If they seem as though they’ll be a good fit, you then decide what the deliverables will be and how much everything will cost.
After you’ve done this, the contracting company will send over their staff, and they’ll work on the problem. Once the issue is solved, that’s typically the end of your relationship with this company.
Right, so this staff augmentation guide we just went through basically covers how the whole process works. Now, we’re going to go over the concept of managed services, so you can learn the difference between these two options.
How Do Managed Services Work?
When using managed services, you hire contractors over a long-term basis, and you use this approach if you need general IT help in your company.
For example, a managed services company might look after your IT systems to make sure everyone has access to ‘Teams’ or ‘Excel.’
They’ll make sure the software is always updated, and they’ll also help with small issues, such as problems with downloading files.
That said, when using managed services, you can also hire a company that can help you with ‘general problems’ within a specific IT category.
For example, if you use AWS, you might hire a company that offers ‘managed AWS services.’ A company like this will do all the work that’s associated with running your AWS system.
So, they’ll monitor your AWS servers to make sure everything is ticking along nicely. They’ll also help you figure out how you can cut your AWS bills, and they’ll shield your setup from cybersecurity threats, too.
When investing in managed services, you’re generally going to pay a monthly fee. This monthly fee is decided before you sign the contract, and you’re given clear information in regards to what you get for your money.
So that’s basically a summary of how managed services work. Hopefully, this managed services guide has cleared up any confusion you might have in regards to this topic.
However, if you’d like to learn more about managed services and how it all works, you should check out a website like curveballsolutions.com.
This site belongs to a company that offers managed services. If you go over it, you’ll learn more about the concept of managed services, and how this kind of service is delivered.
Staff Augmentation vs Managed Services: Which One Is Best?
Now that you’ve read this post, you should have a better understanding of the staff augmentation vs managed services debate.
The option you pick is going to depend on what your needs are. As mentioned, staff augmentation can help you with specific issues and managed services can help you with long-term IT support.
Of course, if your company is big enough, you might need to invest in both options. Either way, it’s hard to say which option is best, but if you speak to your internal team, they’ll help you figure out the best path.
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