A managed service provider (MSP) is a company that provides ongoing and regular support and active administration of services, such as network, application, infrastructure and security, either at a customer's premises, in their MSP's data center (hosting), or in a third-party data center. Outsourcing is often seen as a cost-cutting measure. But why should businesses use an MSP? And how do these types of companies work? This article will explain the advantages of using an MSP and how they can help businesses, whether they have in-house IT staff or not. At its core, an MSP is a company that offers proactive, ongoing support and management of technology under a monthly agreement or subscription.
Large corporations and organizations, such as government agencies, may hire an MSP when they have budget and contracting constraints. Nowadays, the terms cloud service provider and managed service provider are sometimes used interchangeably when the provider's service is backed by a service level agreement (SLA) and is delivered over the Internet. MSPs take care of the complex, consumed, or repetitive work involved in managing IT infrastructure or end-user systems. Many smaller companies lack in-house IT capabilities, so they may view an MSP's service offering as a way to gain IT expertise.
The MSP remotely monitors, updates and manages the service while reporting on the quality, performance and availability of the service. An RMM platform should allow the managed service provider to serve multiple customers and provide access tools to a technician bank simultaneously. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), nonprofits, and government agencies hire MSPs to provide a defined set of day-to-day management services, so they can focus on improving their services without worrying about prolonged system downtime or outages service. The challenge is that while each company that calls itself an MSP may share a similar goal of serving its customers, the way each company does it and the services they will manage for you may vary.
When an MSP is asked to meet an organization's business objectives, it is often expected to fill some gap or function in an IT system or staff. Managed services are the practice of outsourcing the responsibility of maintaining and anticipating the need for a range of processes and functions, apparently for the purpose of improving operations and reducing budget expenditures through the reduction of directly employed staff.
