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For decades, the default approach to IT for most mid-sized businesses was straightforward: hire an internal team, buy some servers, and deal with problems as they come up. It worked well enough when technology was simpler and the stakes were lower. But the landscape has changed dramatically, and that break-fix mentality is becoming increasingly expensive and risky for organizations that depend on their technology to operate.

The shift toward managed IT support has been accelerating steadily, and 2025 is shaping up to be a tipping point. More businesses than ever are moving away from purely internal IT operations or ad-hoc consulting arrangements in favor of managed service providers that take ongoing responsibility for their IT environment. There are several converging factors driving this shift, and understanding them can help you evaluate whether managed services make sense for your organization.

The Cost of Doing IT In-House Has Grown Significantly

The most immediate driver is cost. Hiring qualified IT staff has become extraordinarily competitive. The average salary for a systems administrator in a major metro area now exceeds $85,000, and experienced network engineers and security specialists command significantly more. Once you factor in benefits, training, turnover costs, and the reality that a small internal team cannot provide true 24/7 coverage without burning out, the fully loaded cost of in-house IT support is often two to three times what a managed services agreement would cost for equivalent or better coverage.

Beyond staffing, there is the cost of tooling. Enterprise-grade monitoring, ticketing, endpoint protection, backup, and remote management platforms all carry per-device licensing fees that add up quickly. Managed service providers spread these costs across their client base, giving individual businesses access to tools they could not justify purchasing on their own.

The Expertise Gap Is Widening

Modern IT environments are complex. A typical business now runs a mix of on-premise servers, cloud services, SaaS applications, mobile devices, and remote access infrastructure. Keeping all of that secure, updated, and running smoothly requires expertise across networking, systems administration, cloud platforms, cybersecurity, and end-user support. Expecting a small internal team to be experts in all of these domains is unrealistic, and the knowledge gaps create risk.

Managed service providers solve this by maintaining deep teams with specialists across every discipline. When you work with a provider like Survey Monkeys, you are not just getting a generalist who happens to be available. You are getting access to network engineers, cloud architects, security analysts, and helpdesk specialists who focus on their area of expertise every day.

Downtime Is More Expensive Than Ever

Industry research consistently shows that the average cost of IT downtime for a mid-sized business is between $5,000 and $10,000 per hour. For businesses that rely on real-time systems, such as logistics companies, healthcare providers, or financial services firms, the cost can be much higher. The reactive approach of waiting for something to break and then scrambling to fix it is a gamble that most organizations can no longer afford.

Managed IT support flips this model. Through continuous monitoring, proactive maintenance, and automated alerting, issues are identified and resolved before they cause downtime. Our NOC catches failing drives, certificate expirations, backup failures, and capacity issues days or weeks before they would have caused an outage. That proactive approach is the single biggest reason our clients see measurable improvements in uptime and reliability after switching to managed services.

Is Managed IT Right for Your Business?

Managed IT is not the right fit for every organization. Companies with large, well-funded internal IT departments may not need to outsource their day-to-day operations. But for businesses with 50 to 500 employees that are finding it increasingly difficult to attract and retain IT talent, keep up with security threats, and maintain reliable infrastructure without constant firefighting, managed services offer a compelling alternative. If you are curious about what a transition would look like for your organization, we offer a free IT assessment that gives you a clear picture of where you stand and what a managed services engagement could look like.

Small and mid-sized businesses are increasingly in the crosshairs of cybercriminals. The assumption that attackers only go after large enterprises is dangerously outdated. In fact, smaller organizations are often preferred targets precisely because they tend to have weaker defenses and fewer resources to detect and respond to attacks. Here are the five threats we see most frequently affecting our clients and the businesses that reach out to us after an incident.

1. Phishing and Business Email Compromise

Phishing remains the number one attack vector for businesses of all sizes, and the attacks have become remarkably sophisticated. Gone are the days of obviously fake emails with broken English and suspicious links. Modern phishing campaigns impersonate real vendors, mimic internal communications, and use compromised email accounts to send messages that are nearly indistinguishable from legitimate ones. Business email compromise, where an attacker gains access to an executive's email and uses it to authorize fraudulent wire transfers or redirect payments, has cost businesses billions of dollars globally. The best defense is a combination of advanced email filtering, multi-factor authentication on all accounts, and regular security awareness training that teaches employees to recognize and report suspicious messages.

2. Ransomware

Ransomware attacks continue to evolve and escalate. Modern ransomware does not just encrypt your files; it exfiltrates your data first, then threatens to publish it if you do not pay. This double-extortion model means that even businesses with good backups face significant pressure to pay. The entry points are typically phishing emails, unpatched vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems, or compromised remote access credentials. Prevention requires a layered approach: endpoint detection and response, timely patching, network segmentation, and immutable backups that cannot be encrypted by an attacker who has gained access to your network.

3. Credential Theft and Account Takeover

Weak or reused passwords remain one of the easiest ways for attackers to gain access to business systems. Credential stuffing attacks, where attackers use username and password combinations leaked from breaches at other services, are automated and run at massive scale. If any of your employees use the same password for their corporate email as they do for a personal account that has been breached, your business is at risk. The solution is straightforward: enforce multi-factor authentication on every service that supports it, use a business password manager, and implement dark web monitoring to detect when employee credentials appear in known breach databases.

4. Unpatched Software and Systems

Every month, operating system and application vendors release patches that fix known security vulnerabilities. Every month, many businesses fail to apply them in a timely manner. The window between a vulnerability being disclosed and attackers actively exploiting it has shrunk to days, sometimes hours. This is particularly dangerous for internet-facing systems like VPN appliances, email servers, and web applications, but internal systems are also at risk once an attacker has gained initial access. Automated patch management, regular vulnerability scanning, and a policy that prioritizes critical patches within 48 hours of release are essential components of any security program.

5. Insider Threats and Misconfigurations

Not every security incident comes from an external attacker. Misconfigured cloud services, overly permissive access controls, and employees who inadvertently expose sensitive data account for a significant percentage of data breaches. A SharePoint site that is accidentally shared externally, an S3 bucket with public access enabled, or a former employee whose accounts were never deactivated can all lead to serious security incidents. Regular access reviews, the principle of least privilege, and proper offboarding procedures are as important as any firewall or antivirus solution.

These five threats are not exotic or rare. They are the everyday reality of operating a business in a connected world. The good news is that addressing them does not require a massive security budget. It requires the right tools, the right processes, and the discipline to maintain them consistently. If you would like help assessing your current security posture, Survey Monkeys offers a complimentary initial evaluation to help you understand where your biggest risks are and how to address them.

Moving your organization to the cloud, whether that means migrating email to Microsoft 365, shifting file servers to SharePoint and OneDrive, or moving application workloads to Azure or AWS, is one of the most impactful IT projects you will undertake. Done well, it reduces infrastructure costs, improves collaboration, and gives your team the flexibility to work from anywhere. Done poorly, it leads to data loss, extended downtime, frustrated users, and a long tail of cleanup work that nobody budgeted for.

Having guided dozens of businesses through cloud migrations of varying complexity, we have developed a checklist that covers the critical steps most organizations either overlook or underestimate. Whether you are planning a migration yourself or evaluating providers to do it for you, this list will help you ask the right questions and avoid the most common pitfalls.

1. Inventory Everything First

Before you migrate anything, you need a complete picture of what you are working with. This means documenting every server, every application, every shared drive, every user mailbox, and every integration between systems. You need to know how much data you have, where it lives, who owns it, and what dependencies exist. Skipping this step is the single most common reason migrations go sideways. You cannot build a migration plan for systems you do not know about, and you will inevitably discover them at the worst possible time.

2. Classify Workloads by Migration Strategy

Not everything should move to the cloud the same way. Some workloads can be lifted and shifted with minimal changes. Others need to be re-architected to take advantage of cloud-native services. Some legacy applications may not be cloud-compatible at all and will need to remain on-premise or be replaced entirely. For each workload, decide whether to rehost, refactor, replace, or retain. This classification drives your timeline, budget, and resource requirements.

3. Plan Your Identity and Access Strategy

Identity management is the foundation of a cloud environment. Decide early how you will handle authentication and authorization. Will you extend your on-premise Active Directory to the cloud with Azure AD Connect? Will you move to a cloud-native identity provider? How will you handle multi-factor authentication, conditional access policies, and single sign-on for your SaaS applications? Getting identity right from the start prevents a cascade of access issues and security gaps after migration.

4. Address Security and Compliance Before You Migrate

Moving to the cloud does not automatically make you more secure; it changes your security model. You need to understand the shared responsibility model for your chosen platform and ensure that your security controls are in place before data starts moving. This includes email filtering and anti-phishing policies, endpoint protection, data loss prevention rules, encryption settings, and backup configurations. If you are in a regulated industry, verify that your cloud configuration meets your compliance requirements before migration, not after.

5. Test Migrations Before Going Live

Always run pilot migrations with a small group of users before committing to a full cutover. This allows you to identify issues with mailbox migration, file permissions, application compatibility, and user workflows in a controlled environment where the blast radius is small. Collect feedback from pilot users and fix issues before you roll out to the rest of the organization. It adds time to the project, but it dramatically reduces the risk of a failed or chaotic migration.

6. Communicate and Train

The technical migration is only half the project. Your users need to understand what is changing, when it is happening, and how it affects their daily work. Provide clear, jargon-free communication in advance of any changes, and offer training sessions for new tools. If you are moving from on-premise file shares to SharePoint, do not assume people will figure it out on their own. A well-trained user base means fewer helpdesk tickets, faster adoption, and a smoother transition for everyone.

7. Have a Rollback Plan

No matter how thoroughly you plan, things can go wrong. Before you migrate any production workload, make sure you have a documented rollback plan that your team has actually tested. Know how long a rollback would take, what data might be affected, and who is authorized to make the call. Having a rollback plan you never use is far better than needing one you never created.

Cloud migration is a significant undertaking, but it does not have to be stressful or risky. With the right preparation, a methodical approach, and experienced guidance, the process can be smooth and the results transformative. If you are planning a migration and would like a second set of eyes on your approach, Survey Monkeys offers free cloud readiness assessments to help you start on solid ground.