I still think my IT costs would be lower without an agreement. Can you clarify?

Answer

It is a fact that we have found that, on average, clients with support agreements spend significantly less on IT support than clients without agreements.

Irrespective of this it is important to consider the big picture when looking at support agreement costs; IT support costs are only a very small part of the big picture. The risk mitigation, efficiency and planning benefits of a support agreement far outweigh the costs.

For example, assume you don’t have an agreement. How do you know your backup is working? Maybe it’s not! And how do you know your server is healthy. Are all the critical software updates installed? Is the hardware in good working order? Maybe not! How much would it cost in lost sales and staff time if the server was down for a day? What about two days? What if your data was lost and could not be recovered? Clearly, the cost of these types of events vastly overshadows the cost of any support agreement. If these events can be prevented by an agreement then the agreement will surely pay for itself.