Managed Services make IT services very accessible. What role do they play from the point of view of Bechtle?
Ingo Janßen: For many years now, Managed Services have been an essential component of the Bechtle business model. That means even before digitalisation really took hold, but they’ve really come into their own in this aged of the accelerated digital transformation of the economy and the public sector. Managed Services are a logical development in the traditional system house business to be able to offer our customers complete and expert end-to-end support. True to the motto ‘Taking Responsibility’, Managed Services is all about taking on more accountability for the success of our customers.
What does that mean exactly?
We take on the end-to-end operations of IT architectures, workstations, platforms, security and the cloud, thus laying a sound foundation for their future transformation.
In this age of digitalisation, cloud platforms and technologies are developing and growing in ever-shorter cycles and are also growing in complexity. This demands the expertise to be able to deploy digital resources productively, securely and to the optimum benefit of the business.
Ingo Janßen, Business Manager for Managed Services, Bechtle
Due to the lack of a qualified workforce, our customers increasingly need and are on the lookout for a Managed Services partner that not only brings the expertise for these technologies, but at the same time understands how the services can be used for a successful transformation and can act as a digital business model enabler.
The lack of skilled workers, therefore, plays a central role. Are there other aspects to consider?
First of all, I want to say that the topic of IT security is a trigger for Managed Services. If security isn’t correctly managed, this increases the risk that the company will be paralysed by a security incident. With our Managed Security Services, we can mitigate precisely this risk.
Of course, the digital transformation and the related restructuring of our customers' business models are also triggers to consider managed services. Many are still plagued by uncertainty about the right path to take, which for us means providing our customers with the greatest flexibility and range of opportunities, technologies, cloud providers, etc. possible.
What’s more, it’s no longer all about operating something as cheaply as possible, but about actively shaping the change within the framework of Managed Services and that’s only possible when consulting, integration and Managed Services work in harmony.
Plan – Build – Run has transformed into the agile Innovate – Design – Transform model. In our initial discussions with our customer, we set great store in aligning our Managed Services with the Future Mode of Operation rather than the Current Mode of Operation.
How much does automation contribute to the delivery of services?
The future of Managed Services is in automation, not only for security reasons, but also to keep service quality at a high level, avoid errors and to be able to better scale and master complexities. And last but not least, to meet the expectations of digitalisation in terms of self-service and DevSecOps.
However, automation doesn’t make sense in every situation. The effort required has to balance out with the actual business benefit.
Can you explain what you mean?
Automation has to be developed and maintained. DevSecOps collaboration models with high levels of automation, for example, require programmers with operational expertise as well as experienced administrators with programming knowledge. This is still quite a new job and it is, therefore, quite challenging to combine these two qualities into one position.
And, automation isn’t just automation. As with digitalisation in general, this is not just about automatically mapping existing processes, but about considering how the potential of automation can be leveraged to do things differently.
Traditionally, Managed Services are provisioned by people and supported by technology. In the future, however, they will be automatically deployed by technology and supported by people wherever the tech can’t make headway. That’s a fundamental paradigm shift with all the associated challenges of an organisational transformation.
That sounds like another victory for standardisation.
At Bechtle, we believe in a combination of custom and standardised Managed Services. When it comes to designing Managed Services, our system houses are excellent at responding to customers’ individual needs. They are supported by centrally deployed, standardised and scalable service that can be scaled and adapted by the system house on-site so that the offer the customer the absolute best business value.
Can you explain what you mean?
Automation has to be developed and maintained. DevSecOps collaboration models with high levels of automation, for example, require programmers with operational expertise as well as experienced administrators with programming knowledge. This is still quite a new job and it is, therefore, quite challenging to combine these two qualities into one position.
And, automation isn’t just automation. As with digitalisation in general, this is not just about automatically mapping existing processes, but about considering how the potential of automation can be leveraged to do things differently.
Traditionally, Managed Services are provisioned by people and supported by technology. In the future, however, they will be automatically deployed by technology and supported by people wherever the tech can’t make headway. That’s a fundamental paradigm shift with all the associated challenges of an organisational transformation.
That sounds like another victory for standardisation.
At Bechtle, we believe in a combination of custom and standardised Managed Services. When it comes to designing Managed Services, our system houses are excellent at responding to customers’ individual needs. They are supported by centrally deployed, standardised and scalable service that can be scaled and adapted by the system house on-site so that the offer the customer the absolute best business value.
Ingo Janßen, Business Manager for Managed Services, Bechtle
Bechtle update editorial team
update@bechtle.com
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