IT Support for UK SME’s: 2025 Trends, Risks & Opportunities

How resilient is your business to a digital shock? A single cyber attack on a major UK manufacturer recently demonstrated the potential for catastrophic disruption, with an estimated £1.9 billion economic cost that impacted thousands of supplier firms. This event highlights a stark reality for every business, regardless of size: your operational survival is now directly linked to your digital security.

For most small and medium-sized enterprises, this presents a critical and ongoing risk. Your IT infrastructure is likely strained by the constant threat of attack and the pressure of maintaining aging systems. Every hour your team spends on reactive fixes is an hour not spent on innovation or client service, creating a fundamental threat to your competitiveness.

The solution is to transform your IT from a defensive liability into a strategic asset. The starting point for this transformation is rethinking where your business operates. For most modern companies, that means leveraging the power and flexibility of the cloud. Let's explore how this shift is taking shape, beginning with the move to multi-cloud environments.

The Shift to Multi-Cloud Environments

The era of cloud monogamy is over. Smart businesses are no longer accepting the limitations of a single service and are instead adopting a multi-cloud strategy. This involves choosing services from different clouds based on their performance, cost, and unique features. It is a much better approach than the outdated "all-in-one" model. For example, you might use one provider for its powerful data analytics and another for its affordable storage, creating a top-tier technology setup.

However, this freedom introduces new complexities that can catch businesses by surprise. Regulators are now taking a close look at the real challenges of this model. They are particularly concerned with high data transfer fees and restrictive software licensing, which can cancel out the advantages. Handling these issues requires expertise that many in-house teams do not have. This is exactly why relying on Managed Service Providers (MSPs) has become such a common strategy. The fact that nearly a third of SMEs, 31% to be exact, already trust their entire IT programme to an MSP, shows this is no longer a niche choice but a proven way to manage modern IT.

Why Is It Important?

Adopting a multi-cloud strategy offers tangible benefits. It enhances business continuity and resilience by spreading risk across different providers. For example, you could run your main operations in Microsoft Azure while replicating backups to a different cloud service. It also allows you to use the best services for specific tasks, like running analytics where your data is already stored. 

Furthermore, a well-managed multi-cloud environment can lead to better cost control through the use of financial operations (FinOps) practices. These include setting budgets, receiving alerts for unusual spending, and ensuring you are only paying for what you use.

How Can You Implement It?

A practical approach to adopting a multi-cloud strategy can be broken down into a 90-day plan:

1. Map Your Systems: Start by categorising your workloads to understand their importance and requirements for data location, speed, and recovery time.

2. Design Your Cloud Foundation: For each cloud provider you choose, set up a basic, secure environment. This includes networking, security policies, logging, and backup procedures.

3. Centralise Identity: Use a single sign-on (SSO) solution, like Microsoft Entra, to manage user access across all your cloud applications. This simplifies management and improves security.

4. Ensure Connectivity: If you operate in multiple locations or use several clouds, consider modern networking solutions like SD-WAN or SASE to keep your network traffic secure and reliable.

5. Implement Financial Guardrails: Establish a clear policy for tagging resources, set up budget alerts, and schedule regular reviews to keep costs in check.

6. Manage Your Vendors: When negotiating contracts, pay close attention to clauses related to egress fees, software licensing portability, and interoperability to avoid getting locked into a single vendor.

The Rise of Cloud-Based Automation

With business teams stretched thin and a growing number of software tools to manage, automation has become a necessity. A survey revealed that 82% of businesses feel pressured to adopt new technologies. However, many SMEs report that the main obstacles are not the cost or the business case, but a lack of time and skilled staff.

Where Can You Start?

You can begin with low-risk automation projects that offer a quick return on investment.

For IT Workflows:

• Automate the onboarding process for new employees by automatically creating their accounts, assigning permissions, and setting up their security profiles.

• Streamline software updates and patching with automated schedules and rollback plans.

• Improve your helpdesk by automatically routing support tickets to the right team based on priority and service type.

For Business Processes:

• Automate your accounts payable and receivable by using AI to extract information from invoices and route them for approval.

• Simplify scheduling and basic marketing tasks, such as sending follow-up emails after a customer fills out a form.

• Speed up document creation by using templates for proposals and contracts, and integrating e-signature tools.

How Can You Stay Safe?

To ensure your automation efforts are successful and secure, it's important to establish some ground rules. Build your automation around your centralised identity and access management system. Always pilot new automation, monitor its performance, and have a clear plan to roll it back if something goes wrong. Assign a specific owner to each automated workflow and make sure you budget for training your team, as skills gaps are a primary barrier to adoption for SMEs.

The Move to Network-as-a-Service (NaaS)

The old way of managing a business network is becoming obsolete. Buying boxes of hardware, dealing with complex configurations, and facing large upfront costs no longer makes sense for the way we work today. A modern and intelligent alternative is emerging in Network-as-a-Service (NaaS). This approach represents a fundamental shift in strategy. It turns your network into a flexible subscription service, much like the cloud applications you already use.

This model is gaining traction because it directly solves the headaches of supporting hybrid teams and multiple locations. Instead of complicated rollouts for every new site, you can deploy a consistent and secure network managed from a single platform. However, the real win is the reduction in complexity. Most IT teams are drowning in a sea of management tools. It is common for them to be juggling between five and ten different platforms just to keep the network running. 

NaaS, especially when bundled with security like SASE, helps to simplify this situation. This gives your team back valuable time and focus, allowing them to move from being network administrators to becoming strategic enablers of the business.

How Should You Choose A Naas Provider?

When evaluating NaaS options, consider the following:

• Scope: Understand your needs, including the number of sites, remote users, and critical applications.

• Security: Look for comprehensive security features like Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).

• Resilience: Ensure the service offers features like dual internet links for key sites and automatic failover to 4G or 5G if the primary connection goes down.

• Observability: The service should provide detailed insights into network performance and user experience.

• Contract: Your contract should be flexible, with clauses for growth, device refresh entitlement, and clear exit terms.

A good way to roll out NaaS is to start with a pilot at two locations. Baseline your current network performance and then set new performance goals for your most important business applications. Implement Zero Trust Network Access to phase out your old VPN and integrate it with your device management system for enhanced security.

The Imperative of Robust Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity has become a critical boardroom issue, and the reason is simple: the threat is no longer a distant risk but a clear and present danger. The scale of this problem is escalating at a startling rate. According to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the most severe attacks surged by more than 50% in the past year alone.

This signifies that the attacks succeeding are more disruptive and costly than ever. In this high-stakes environment, it is no surprise that 61% of small and medium-sized businesses now view cybersecurity as their single biggest challenge. 

Due to this, businesses are moving from passive defence to active investment in resilience. In fact, a recent report shows that 76% of SMEs expect cybersecurity budgets to increase in the next 12 months.

What Should You Do In The Next 90 Days?

Here is a security sprint to strengthen your defences:

1. Identity and Access: Enforce MFA for all. Add phishing-resistant factors like platform biometrics or passkeys for admins and finance.

2. Endpoint and Email: EDR/XDR on all devices. Block macros. Isolate risky file types. Use business-grade email security with inbound scanning, impersonation defence, and DMARC. Hard block attachment types used by loaders. Strip active content in risky docs.

3. Data and Backup: 3-2-1 backups, immutable copies, and quarterly restore tests. Encrypt everywhere. Use key management with HSM/KMS. DLP rules for finance/legal. Label and auto-protect sensitive files.

4. Patching and Config: Two-ring cadence for OS/browsers. Emergency path for critical CVEs (<72h). Baselines with CIS templates for Windows/M365/Azure plus MDM compliance policies.

5. People and Process: Quarterly phishing simulations. Report-button in Outlook/Teams. Incident runbook with tabletop exercise. Log who calls who and what’s disconnected. Review cyber-insurance minimums and close gaps.

6. Third Parties and AI: Vendor risk mini-DPIA. For AI tools, add allowed models, approved data, prompt hygiene, and no PII without consent.

Conclusion: Your Path Forward

To navigate the current landscape and build a competitive advantage, SMEs should focus on a clear, actionable plan. 

Here are the practical steps to take:

• Baseline Your Position: Start by mapping your top applications, data sets, and existing security controls to understand your current state.

• Prioritise the Fundamentals: Immediately focus on fixing identity management with MFA and ensuring your backup processes are robust and tested.

• Embrace Incremental Automation: Begin automating two repetitive workflows each quarter to free up valuable team time and reduce manual errors.

• Consolidate Your Technology: Aim to simplify your IT environment by moving towards a single identity platform, one EDR/XDR solution, a unified MDM, a primary collaboration suite, and a consolidated network/SASE provider.

• Build for Flexibility, Buy for Exit: Use open standards and infrastructure-as-code. When negotiating contracts, demand terms that reduce high egress fees and licensing traps to avoid vendor lock-in.

• Measure and Report: Track key performance indicators such as support ticket resolution times, patch compliance, phishing simulation failure rates, and cloud cost variance. Share these metrics in a monthly one-page report with leadership to demonstrate progress and value.

By taking these deliberate steps, you will achieve tangible gains in the form of lower downtime, faster employee onboarding, predictable costs, and stronger overall business resilience.