SMB & Mid Market IT: Why managed services are a game changer

Venkata Bonam 

First of all, thanks for having me, Jyotshana. Hi guys, I am Venkat Bonam, Director of Global Delivery at Amzur Infotech. I lead managed services practice. So spanning up from testing and info operations, are the main two practices been part of this. So I carry more than close to 25 years of experience in global delivery of project management, managed services, and I specialize in driving, especially in the automation part.

Agile and lean practices to help clients in healthcare, manufacturing and other public sector as well. Main motive is faster time to value and higher quality. was the thing. So one interesting thing is that I’m so passionate about continuous innovation and turning technology into tangible business outcomes. So especially this topic, I’m deeply passionate about it. Managed services has evolved a lot. And today, they are no longer just about keeping the lights on.

Becoming a major drive of business innovation resilience. So I think the perception of managed services is a long overdue for a reset, especially in the SMB space. So I’m looking forward.

WHY MANAGED SERVICES MATTER NOW

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, right, Yes, exactly. You’re right. We want to know about, see, there are many technological advancements in the market. So how has technology demand evolved for mid-size businesses in the last few years?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, so traditionally if you look at it, managed services were seen as a way to just cut IT costs, like for example, outsourcing support, infrastructure, helpers, all those things. But today it is more strategic. So the biggest change has been the shift from IT being a support function to becoming a growth enabler. So today, if you look at the businesses, they’re expecting to be always digitally connected and data-driven regardless of the size, whether it is mid-sized or small segment, right?

Especially the mid-size firms are dealing with cloud migrations, cybersecurity mandates, hybrid work and customer expectations that rival large enterprises. But unlike large corporations, they don’t have always have an in-house capacity for every area, right? Whether it is cloud or DevOps or monitoring or data analytics, those kinds of areas. So this is where the managed services stepping, bringing in scale, expertise and speed without the overhead.

So basically in simple words, could say it’s not a necessity. It is a necessity now, not an option anymore.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, yeah, right. So obviously, see, we are living in our transforming world. So there are so many challenges, and downs in the industry. So what specific industry challenges are you seeing businesses solve through managed services?

Venkata Bonam

Yeah, as I’ve worked in healthcare, retail and energy, would cover more on these areas. So basically, you know that each domain we work in has definitely has unique challenges. But common themes like the security, uptime, compliance and efficiency, these are the most frequently happen challenges that I could across seen healthcare, retail and energy domains. For example, in healthcare, the focus is on maintaining the HIPAA compliant infrastructure.

Handling large data sets securely and ensuring our time for telehealth. And for example, if you see in retail domains, it’s about real-time visibility into inventory, omnichannel support, and security systems, especially as more SMB retailers embrace e-commerce. And when it comes to the energy domain, we help with infrastructure monitoring, real-time alerting, and predictive maintenance using IoT and analytics.

These aren’t one-time fixes, they are going operational needs and managed services brings a continuous layer of reliability and optimization for these challenges.

Jyotshana Jha

Yes, as we talking about the challenges in various domains. So see, every domain have a different kind of challenges and uncertainties. So in commenting on that with economics uncertainties still looming, how do managed services help businesses maintain stability?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, so I would say they provide three major stability layers. First one is cost predictability, resilience and electricity. So comes to the cost predictability, basically you are moving from capex to the opex. So you pay for what you need, not for the entirety. And coming to the resilience through 24 by 7 monitoring, proactive patching and disaster recovery readiness, these are the main aspects that we need to look into.

And elasticity. can scale services up or down quickly based on the demand. So this means that in unsettling times, this makes a huge difference. So looking at these three areas. So you don’t want to overstaff or undeliver. So managed services let you optimize both this and spend while staying on the agile area.

VALUE BEYOND COST SAVINGS

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, true. See, if you are talking about the cost, we all know that if you are working with the client partners and if the company is doing the businesses, we all know that how we can go for the cost savings and ROI. So we want to know in managed services, how do you measure the actual ROI of managed services beyond the obvious cost of savings?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, so it’s very interesting because everyone always more important, right? So I would say we look beyond the financial metrics, right? Not just only the financial metrics. For example, mainly we concentrate on reducing the downtime. So which directly impacts revenue and as well as the customer experience. And second thing is that faster issue resolution and the fewer escalations is more important aspect and accelerated release cycles and deployment frequency.

Improved compliance structure and audience readiness. our last one is that reduction in employee churn from burnout due to the operations by writing a lot of business. For instance, we help the retail client improve response time by 40 % and reduce unflagged outages to almost nearly to zero. So that’s a tangible value even if it’s not a line item in the budget that they have planned for.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, exactly. So see, we are doing so many changes in our clients and their services to get a better response or get a more productivity. So what transformation have you seen in client businesses after implementing the managed services from your side?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, in my experience, clients become more forward thinking these days, right? Instead of firefighting infrastructure issues, their internal teams focus on innovation, launching new digital products, enhancing customer experience, and optimizing internal processes. So one of our clients restructured their entire IT completely from managed services stabilizing their core operations, right? So they repurpose their internal

IT team to focus on business outcomes and automation and all those things, unlocking more value than they thought possible actually. So we got a very good feedback on that area as well from the client.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, great. So see, if you are talking about the innovation and if we are talking about the changement, you have already done. Can you please elaborate these like major things about how does having managed services support innovation within a company?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, so innovation is required for every practice at any point of time. So basically, innovation does not thrive in chaos, in my opinion. When core systems are unstable or all IT resources are reactivated, it’s hard to think creatively. So managed services free up your time, so reduce distractions and bring in tools and capabilities that may not exist internally.

Like observability platforms, automation tool chains, our devop practices and all those things. So they also bring cross industry best practices as well, helping clients leapfrog into modern operating models faster. So by doing all these things, your internal team can then redirect efforts towards launching new services, exploring new revenue streams, and experimenting with emerging technologies, that are there in the market.

MAKING IT WORK — STRATEGIC ADVICE

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, exactly. See, obviously, if you are talking about the internal teams, and there are many teams, you already be handled like 50 or 100 people in a time. So there are some challenges in this. Obviously, we are working in this and if we have a deployment issues and some really good issues. So I want to know, how should businesses balance internal IT teams with managed service partners?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, that’s very good question because as I already covered some of the point in my earlier question. So basically, I should say it should be a collaborative model, not a replacement. So basically, the internal team should own the business alignment strategy and critical applications as well. And managed services can take over the platform maintenance, routine operations, user support, and even specific areas like the info operations like that.

The collaborative model definitely creates a room for the IT leaders to play a more strategic role, acting as an innovation partners to the business rather than just the technical fighters. That’s how we can balance both the internal teams with the managed services partners.

Jyotshana Jha

Yes, sure, we could. See, you already tell us what is the transition we can do and how we can go for it. But any other special advice you can give ensuring a smooth transition when adopting managed services.

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, would say we should start with a clear charter. Define outcomes, not just tasks. That’s what I generally do at my organization. So have strong onboarding, including knowledge transition and stakeholder alignment. Identify low risk areas to start like monitoring, health tests, and all those things. And most importantly, communicate openly with your teams. Emphasizing that this is about enhancing the capability, not about just cutting their jobs.

Lastly, would say assign internal champions who can act as the connectors between your teams and the partner. This ensures faster integration and the cultural development as well. definitely gives a lot of results when you do this collaboration model, keeping the collaboration model aspect in the minds.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, exactly. See, obviously, AI is a booming sector right now. we are all the companies are using AI and automation changing. How do you see AI and automation changing the managed services landscape?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah.

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, so AI is happening everywhere, right? Everywhere. And same case goes with managed services as well. So AI and automation has already been transforming the space in the managed services area, right? So we now have platforms where AI can handle all the L1 issues, alert correlation, detect anomalies in real time.

Recommend fixes and even automate some of the basic incidents, redeeming the basic incidents of the L1 issues as well. So if you look at it from that perspective, L1 support is increasingly handling by the virtual agents. What I could see in some of the places this has been happening and also we have started these kind of things at Amstel as well. So AI driven analytics helps clients definitely to forecast the users patterns, predict the downtime and automate provisioning as well. And in my opinion, I would say with my experience in three to five years, definitely we will see a shift from SLAs to experience level agreements and outcome based pricing powered by intelligent operations.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, that’s great. Obviously you’re working from you already told us you’re working from last 25 years. It’s a big years. So I know there are many challenges and there are many stories. Can you please share us a story about a challenging implementation that ended up being a particular successful?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, there are so many incidents. Maybe I will talk about the recent ones that has happened at us. a healthcare company has approached us during the pandemic time with an overwhelmed IT setup. They had growing demand, scattered infrastructure, no central monitoring and compliance risks as well. So what we did is that we took over their entire infra operations and support.

Venkata Bonam 

and implemented the automated alerting, set up a single-pane dashboard, and introduced ticket prioritization, all these things. And recently we started off doing some of these things, automations, by using the AA as well, to the same client. So recently what we have observed is that after doing these kind of changes and all those things using the AA as well, we have reduced the incidents almost close to 40 to 50 percent and improve the SLA compliance almost from earlier it was used to be at 60 % kind of a thing to 85 % to 90 % now. And we’ve created a breathing room for these IT team so that they can focus more on the digital health initiatives and innovators that have been happening at their organization. So it is a huge turnaround time and it was very, very successful in nature. And now we are planning to start more of these AI factors also into the same area and we are expecting more results coming out of it. And most importantly, client is so, happy and that is what the main thing that we could see from this story.

ADDRESSING CONCERNS

Jyotshana Jha

Yes Venkat, obviously we are talking about large teams and clients. So there might be some security concerns and there are some challenges in safe data driven things. So what is the biggest security concern in businesses about managed services and how you address them?

Venkata Bonam 

Okay, so top concerns, I would say data privacy, unauthorized access and vendor locking. There might be more actually, but from my way of looking at it, I could see these are the three areas, data privacy, unauthorized access and the vendor locking. These are the three top concerns I could see. So.

What we did to mitigate these things is that we need to use zero trust access models, those kind of things, and ensuring secure onboarding and offboarding of users and systems, and maintaining audit rights for every action that we do, and having the data residency and encryption policies in place as well, and aligning with the standards like.

HIPAA SOC 2, ISO and other standards that has been very much required because these are all part and parcel of our organization as we’ve been working with different domains as I mentioned the start of the conversation on the healthcare side, energy and the detail as well. we made sure that we have been certified on those areas and we are always aligned to these standards to maintain these certifications as well.

We also educate our clients on the shared responsibility. It is not about just partners thing have to do all this kind of a thing. It has to be a shared responsibility. So what we secure and what this should control this kind of things. This is what I could see.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, exactly. See, if you are talking about the government’s models like HEPA and certifications and ISO, we know that if you’re working in a healthcare or retail sectors, we need to maintain so many documents and retail sectors, governance models, like government authorities, we need to take so many applications from them. So for companies concerned about losing controller oversight, what governance model works best for them?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, I would recommend transparency and co-governance. Simple way. Basically, transparency and co-governance definitely will help a lot in doing the streamlining the processes and making sure that everything is being going as per the plan. For example, when I say transparency and co-governance, I would say weekly and monthly reviews definitely should happen. And they should be shared that works for transparency.

Jyotshana Jha

Yes.

Venkata Bonam

and joint planning for roadmap alignment as well. definitely the partners should be part of those roadmap alignments as well. And the different escalation matrices and risk management workflows. So primarily, these are the four areas definitely we need to focus on. So the reason being, would say, that governance is not just about control. It’s about, as I always been talking from the start of the conversation, that it’s all about collaboration and trust building.

So we make sure the clients always feel informed and empowered as well. So in simple words, it’s a partnership, not a replacement as I said earlier as well.

Jyotshana Jha

Exactly. So we’re talking about the human, like obviously there are AI, there are automations. So how do you maintain the human touch in service delivery when so much being is automated?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, so people talk about automation AI and all this definitely human that should be always there. Right. Frankly speaking, it’s a great question. Right. The reason being automation always handles the task, but humans build the trust. Right. Which is very, important when we work as a partnership with Amazon. So

Jyotshana Jha

Exactly.

Venkata Bonam 

So at Amjur, we assigned dedicated relationship managers as the single point of contact for the clients. And we hold regular check-ins, feedback loops, and QB hours as well. And most importantly, the human touch comes from understanding the context, being empathetic during incidents, and acting as partners, not just as support agents where we can just do the support and all those things. We are just being part of them as a collaborative approach.

FUTURE OUTLOOK

Jyotshana Jha

Yes, thank you. The other thing I want to know from yourself, there are many technologies coming on in the market. So which technology are you most excited about incorporating in managed services?

Venkata Bonam 

So a lot of changes have happening in the market, but at this point of time, I’m excited about AIOps and GenAI. These are the areas where we have been working more on these things. So GenAI is for self-healing the systems and low code is one of the other areas where we can all orchestrate for building the custom operation workflows. So AIOps, GenAI and low code, these are the three technology areas where I’m so excited about. And also, AI-powered observability and the synthetic monitoring will change how we perceive the system health and user experience. So this is one of the important aspects we are focusing more on. And definitely this will reduce the manual effort and increase the reliability going forward.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, exactly. Obviously, we all work on a future roadmap or a product roadmap. So how do you see the managed services industry in the next five years?

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, as I’ve been in the industry, I’ve seen a lot of changes during my career as well. So I would say definitely it will involve into adaptive service ecosystems, right? Powered by AI, backed by cross-function skills and centered around outcomes, not just tasks anymore. So the distinction between product and service will definitely blur. MSPs will go innovate with clients, embedding into their digital transformation initiatives.

In other words, would say move from break-fix models to strategic co-innovation hubs, right? Rather than concentrating only on fixing the models and all those things, always need to be strategic in nature and more innovative in nature kind of stuff. And definitely partnerships will become more integrated and the MSS will shape client roadmaps, just anymore of the supporting team kind of stuff.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, so see if we are talking about the partnership, if we are talking about the clients, if we are talking about the developing businesses, so what kind of advice or the main skills should learn businesses be developing internally to get the most from their managed services partnership.

Venkata Bonam 

When it comes to the investment, this is what we have been doing and recommending to the clients as well. Basically, they need to invest more on the vendor management and the strategic sourcing and data literacy to consume dashboards and insights and automation readiness. So being able to work with bots and AI as well, rather than just to do some manual stuff, doing the regular. And all those stuff. And again, I’m repeating the same thing. all, definitely a collaborative leadership should be there to align both the internal and the external things all the time. They need to work together, definitely. So think of managed services as a capability augmentation, not just as an outsourcing kind of stuff.

Jyotshana Jha

Yeah, great. So obviously if you’re talking about the leadership and if you’re talking about the management, you feel that leadership and management and this higher project management skills will work out in this. We need to implement to thought line services.

Venkata Bonam 

Yeah, definitely. Every role will have a significant importance at any point of time. Definitely the project management, even recently I heard an article about agents are acting as the project managers. So definitely that will be part of these kind of in managed services going forward. And then these agents will act and do these kind of stuff on their own and at a greater level in depth.

Jyotshana Jha

Sure, Yes, thank you so much, Venkat, for the very informative session. One last and the final statement you want to add anything for this for our viewers so that they can have a good gist about this. Can you please add anything?

Venkata Bonam 

Thank Jyotshana. Thanks for giving this opportunity. I would say managed services are not about reducing headcount or just saving money. They’re about creating a smarter, faster, and more resilient business. If you choose the right partner, you are not outsourcing active. You are insourcing the capability. That is most important. And I wish all the audience good luck for the future.

Jyotshana Jha

Yes.

Jyotshana Jha

Thank you so much Venkat. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.