What is a Managed Services Provider? By A. Nutt At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

A managed services provider, or MSP, is revolutionizing the way in which a business manages its information. This is because the MSP manages that information for the business, giving the business a little less to worry about in their day-to-day operations. This is the perfect example of continuous outsourcing of an IT function.

Many businesses today are finding that outsourcing is a more cost-effective way to go about business, especially if they don’t have an in-house staff to take care of IT functions. It is especially beneficial because of the fact that the only function of an MSP is to ensure the proper function of the systems that they manage.

Services provided by MSPs

There are quite a few services that can be provided by MSPs. Those services include desktop and security monitoring, remote network, remote data backup, patch management, and technical assistance.

All of this is available at several different price structures. The various price structures are set up because some businesses need services that others may not. This offers a wide range of flexibility to the business, which is probably why MSPs are growing in popularity. They are also growing in popularity due to the fact that the costs to keep these operations in-house are on the rise. Businesses cannot simply see the sense in having in-house operations when operating in-house is more expensive than outsourcing these services to MSPs.

The benefits

There are a wide range of benefits to the company when using MSPs. Those benefits include:

- System monitoring 24 hours per day 7 days per week. This is something that a lot of businesses are not able to take care of themselves. Their IT staff comes in for an eight hour work day and that is it.

- Everything is taken care of by one company instead of multiple vendors. This avoids a lot of confusion.

- The price contracts are fixed, so the cost of using an MSP is not a mystery. The company knows exactly what to expect. Even if a crisis comes about, the price stays the same. The company is not charged more just because everyone had to work a little harder.

- The average revenue per user increases due to reduced costs. This is a result of the company not having to pay an hourly wage to IT employees that can equal tens of thousands of dollars per year.

- The cost for maintaining an IT staff is reduced because the service is outsourced.

- There is no cost to build their own IT management system. This is something that can be incredibly expensive because of equipment costs and staff costs.

As for the services offered, the list goes on and on, but one will find that managed integrated access, networking, and remote access are amongst the services. There is also network marketing and management, configuration management, asset management, managed videoconferencing, managed firewall, managed voice security, incident management, threat assessment monitoring, and much more.

What are the drawbacks?

There cannot be benefits without the other extreme, which are drawbacks. Just like with everything, there is always something. In this case, it is the fact that there is a lack of on-site repair. MSPs can fix software problems from their location, but fixing hardware issues is not possible. That is why it is good for a company to have provisions in place in case a hardware issue occurs. However, even companies with an IT staff on board may have to occasionally have another company come in to fix hardware issues, so this is not something that is specific to MSPs.

Nevertheless, this is something that is growing in popularity, especially in a time where competitiveness requires a business to save as much money as possible. At the same time, the business is able to have the best of everything.

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