Columbus UK Blog

Do I need an Application Management Services (AMS) partner?

Written by Jack Dawson | Mar 30, 2021

Application management services (AMS) is essentially outsourcing the task of monitoring and maintaining your business applications to an external provider who specialises in these kinds of activities. But why should your business work with an AMS partner? Isn’t it better to manage it all in-house? Let’s discuss…

You need specialist knowledge

Maintaining an efficient IT infrastructure often requires specialist knowledge and expertise. But you might not need it 100% of the time, which can make hiring in-house specialists a not very cost-effective approach. For example, you might want to upgrade your business systems to the cloud but you have several legacy systems and not enough developers with experience in legacy languages.

Recruiting for developers with this niche expertise can be tricky, expensive and time-consuming. Not to mention your project isn’t a forever thing so there might not be enough permanent work for these developers.

With an AMS partner, their specialists become an extension of your team. There’s no need to bother with all the hassle of recruitment because the specialists come as part of your contract with the AMS partner.

Your IT team is spending more time managing apps than anything else

If you have specialists in-house to manage your apps, that’s great! But what if you need them to focus on other tasks and there’s suddenly not enough hands working on the application management side of things?

Alternatively, what if your IT team’s time is predominantly being taken up by managing and monitoring apps when you also need them to work on other projects? Your IT team need to be on the pulse when it comes to keeping up with technology and innovation trends. But how can they focus on being innovative and plan for the future when they’re so preoccupied with application management?

That swings us back round to our point about recruiting for more specialists…

Work with an AMS partner and you won’t need to worry about this. AMS partners take the stress out of maintenance, updates and system enhancements, freeing up your IT team’s time to focus on higher-value tasks.

There’s a lot of change in store for the business

This one should be a no-brainer. You obviously need a partner who’s experienced in cloud migrations to the platform that you want to move to. You can search for top partners via partner registries for the cloud platform you’re interested in.

Speaking of higher-value tasks, when it comes to business system upgrades and migrations, you may need the full might of your IT team. Especially when it’s a large, complex project like a cloud migration. But (and we mentioned this earlier), how will you ensure your IT team has the time to plan and innovate when their time is full of application management-related tasks?

AMS partners take this fear and uncertainty away by ensuring their specialists handle the application management. Now your specialists can focus on the planning and innovating. Great AMS partners can even be counted upon to support you with these application or infrastructure-related changes.

You want to become more cost-efficient

Want to boost your business’ cost efficiency? Then an AMS partner could be the right decision for you! Working with an AMS partner means:

  • You free up your in-house teams to focus on other tasks…
  • …giving them more time to work on the tasks that truly drive the business forward and improve your bottom line
  • You leave efficient, industry-trained specialists to look after your applications - people who know exactly how to streamline your systems and processes to your advantage…
  • … meaning there’s no need for you to recruit, upskill or onboard any new employees

    In other words, outsourcing your application management could be a great way to improve cost efficiency and drive your business forward!

Want to ensure you choose the right AMS partner?

Now that you know why it’s worth working with an AMS partner, your next question might be, “how do I pick the right partner?”. We have just the resource to whet your appetite.

In our guide to AMS partners, we discuss the what, why and how. From what an Application Management Services (AMS) partner is and why they’re worth working with to how you can choose the right one, click the button below to learn more.