What is a Managed Service Provider (MSP)?
A managed service provider (MSP) takes care of the day-to-day management of your business infrastructure end-to-end. MSPs are known for their ability to enhance everyday business operations performance through seamless remote management of business services, comprehensive monitoring of business networks, and rapid issue resolution for everything from service desk requests to security incidents. The services offered by MSPs can be utilized by anyone from small businesses to large corporations, non-profit organizations and even government offices.
MSPs offer a high degree of flexibility when it comes to infrastructure management as customers are free to pick and choose from a range of infrastructure services as in when they have a need for it. The solutions are typically very easy to scale and allow for plug and play deployment. Managed IT Services also help companies keep their IT spending predictable and manageable – a key benefit that can keep businesses competitive even in the most strained market environments.
8 Business Benefits of Working With a Managed Services Provider (MSP)
Let us help you understand the core benefits businesses are leveraging by outsourcing IT through managed services.
Cost saving and easier budgeting
Small and medium businesses typically do not have the deep pockets that larger corporations can count on to build and maintain an effective infrastructure. However, they continue to face the same threats that large corporations do and in fact, they face cyber threats to a much greater extent since malicious actors are always on the lookout for targets with obvious vulnerabilities in their infrastructure.
SMBs find it very hard to deploy the requisite technologies and highly skilled talent that go with building a secure and seamless infrastructure environment and require a premium investment. Managed service providers help small businesses address a lot of these issues. By outsourcing critical infrastructure and talent needs, SMBs can finally afford to have an equal footing in business efficiency and security posture as their larger counterparts without extensive upfront investment.
Avoid Downtime
MSPs allow businesses to implement a proactive approach towards issue detection and rapid resolution before they have a chance to snowball into system downtime. Managed service providers typically monitor your network round the clock and flag issues before they can become a problem.
In case a problem does happen, MSPs typically employ extensive root cause analysis (RCA) that helps them understand the underlying reasons and prevent recurrence. Since downtimes can cost businesses not only financially, but also in lost business opportunities and decreased customer satisfaction – MSPs can end up potentially saving your organization thousands of dollars in the long run by preventing downtime.
Receive 24/7 Assistance With Quick Response Times
Reputed MSPs offer 24/7 IT support with a specialized and dedicated task force equipped with the right tools and expertise to guarantee first call issue resolution. This is particularly relevant for businesses whose profitability is dependent on remaining 100% available and any performance drop can prove costly. MSPs ensure round-the-clock protection of your mission critical applications and data and are always available to help regardless of the hour or the day.
Data encryption in the cloud
Sensitive data needs to be encrypted even when stored in the cloud. This ensures that the data remains protected both in transit and at rest. In general, cloud service providers often offer their own encryption services. You should go through the offered data protection policies in detail before you choose to migrate to a certain cloud service provider. Here is a guide on how to choose the right cloud service model for your business.
Better Business Focus
Managed service providers make it easy for businesses to focus on growth drivers rather than the deployment and maintenance of their core infrastructure. With access to industry-leading software, hardware and expertise available on demand, businesses can shift their focus solely on product or service development, enhanced customer satisfaction and growth.
Gain Access to Experts
Password security plays a crucial role in preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data. Develop and enforce a strict password policy including regular password updates, multi-factor authentication and more. This will also help you develop resilience against brute force attacks.
Perform routine penetration tests
Reputable managed service providers empower your business with access to some of the leading industry experts in your specific business niche. This means that your business, regardless of the growth cycle it currently is in, always has access to some of the best minds in the industry when it comes to technical or business expertise. Experts working with MSPs also have a very broad range of expertise that helps them avoid the tunnel vision that some in-house engineers develop when they have been working with a single product or service for years.
This ensures a fresh set of eyes, familiarity with industry-leading solutions, and innovative ideas that your business can benefit from to retain your competitive edge. All of these can help you avoid common problems, such as failure to optimally use existing technologies and software, not making use of best practices, and more. With MSPs, both deployment and phasing out of software and hardware becomes a breeze without the slightest impact on your daily operations. MSPs can also help you address the current talent crunch with a large pool of certified and widely experienced talent available at their disposal.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery has become critical business needs with ransomware incidents and an assortment of cyber threats on the rise. MSPs are specialized in dealing with crisis situations and can help you navigate unforeseen scenarios with minimum impact on business processes. Even in the case of a successful breach, MSPs can help you quickly resume operations with stress-tested data backup always on hand and well-defined recovery plans. For more information on business continuity and disaster recovery services, please refer Managed Cloud Services.
Customer Satisfaction
Most reputed MSPs offer SLA-backed guarantees on service assurance. This, in turn, translates to near 100% uptime and availability for your customers/ end-users. Since the effectiveness of MSPs is often measured by their dependability, most make it a point to go above and beyond the agreed-upon service-level agreements. is one of the best business outcomes you get when you engage with an MSP. Achieving a superior CSAT through a distinguished service delivery infrastructure is often one of the primary reasons why businesses seek the help of MSPs.
Compliance and Security
Irrespective of the business vertical your company may be active in, governments across the world have clamped down tighter than ever on data regulation and privacy. With regulations and compliance standards growing more complex and detailed by the year, businesses depend on MSPs to ensure that they stay well ahead of compliance parameters.
Most MSPs now offer at least partially automated systems that can immediately identify existing vulnerabilities and gaps in security patches. IT outsourcing services also offer comprehensive auditing and reporting services through which you can verify your current security posture and compliance status.