Why Your Managed Service Provider Choice Matters More Than Ever
Jonathan Lerner is the CEO and president of InterVision.
Businesses have long used managed service providers (MSPs) to supplement organizational needs, providing IT support for companies that don’t have specialized expertise in-house or those who prefer to focus their hiring strategy on other business areas. But now that many organizations have adopted a digital transformation strategy, executive leaders are looking closely at which business responsibilities can be offloaded. This means important items like security and cloud management are increasingly falling to MSPs.
According to a Fortune Business Insights report, “the global managed services market […] is projected to grow from $330.37 billion in 2025 to $878.71 billion by 2032.” This highlights the demand in the MSP space. But choosing an MSP can be difficult if you haven’t aligned that selection process with your overall strategy. It’s crucial, for example, to keep in mind your organization’s resiliency, security, compliance and agility goals when evaluating vendors.
The Expanding Bench Of MSP Responsibilities
Historically, an MSP might have tackled a handful of IT services. But now that organizations have shifted more responsibilities away from in-house staff, MSPs have expanded their roles to include areas like data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services, cloud management and optimization, compliance certifications and much more.
As more organizations rely on MSPs, proactiveness is essential. Hence, organizations should evaluate how actively the MSP is willing to be a strategic advisor while also addressing evolving technology tasks. This will help ensure that, as innovations emerge, your organization can adapt and evolve to meet core business objectives. Those whose MSPs aren’t aligned with their company strategy risk falling behind competitors. We live in a fast-paced era. A good MSP should recognize this need to stay constantly ahead, and they should be advising you on how to remain nimble.
The Need For Security And Compliance
It’s common to see cyber events in the news. From ransomware attacks to phishing scandals to massive data breaches, this criminality has made it imperative to plan accordingly. An MSP could take on establishing continuous monitoring, integrating security tools and measures, performing rapid response services and doing penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities. These activities will save time and provide you with an extra pair of hands should anything happen.
Additionally, be careful not to overlook compliance standards. Here, an MSP can act as an extension of your IT team during regulatory and compliance audits, ensuring your organization is well-positioned to pass these rigorous frameworks. Regardless of your industry standards for data privacy, data storage and response posture, MSPs that have this specialized expertise are especially valuable because they can assist in maintaining customer trust, brand reputation and business continuity in the face of evolving threats and scrutiny.
Cloud Transformation And Scalability
Many organizations have adopted a cloud-first posture, choosing to move away from the era of owning on-premises operations in favor of dynamic cloud environments. However, this shift to the cloud also comes with complexities that not every MSP can handle. If your MSP doesn’t have the staff for these complicated workloads and integration requirements, it might be good to vet other MSPs with these goals in mind.
A good MSP should shepherd your organization to the cloud with ease. And when you get there, they should also know how to control costs, optimize workloads and increase your security stance. Several varying options for MSP service models exist, which can help delineate what you need, how much and when—and what the cost breakdown could be for your organization. Doing this research upfront to align on your engagement level will help in selecting the right MSP.
Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity
Any business disruption can result in lost revenue. It damages your brand reputation and how your organization gains an edge over your competition. Whether a disruption is caused by an outage, a cyber event, a natural disaster or another form of downtime, the chaos that such an event can induce may leave your employees, executives and board members reeling. For this reason, an MSP can play an essential role in preparedness, implementing disaster recovery and business continuity tools and strategies to weather whatever downtime your organization encounters. Here, an MSP may establish backups, failover plans and mitigation strategies for a varying degree of event types, all aimed at keeping your operations running with minimal downtime. How quickly your business can recover following a disruptive scenario dictates how well you can maintain customer confidence.
Choosing An MSP
An MSP is a strategic decision. Indeed, the right partner can even be the contributing difference to the viability of your organization. This is why it’s paramount to align your organizational leadership around why you need an MSP to begin with. If everyone agrees you don’t want star employees focused on unnecessary tasks, like managing a data center infrastructure, then the decision of what to offload becomes much easier.
For example, my organization made a strategic decision to reduce the in-house folks managing call lines for our unified communications clients because we felt it would be better to leverage AI-driven responses to offload some of the more burdensome resourcing tasks. It freed up our team to focus on our managed cloud services, a growing market for us. Similarly, the best choice for your business comes down to your long-term goals.
Also, when selecting an MSP that best fits your business vision, don’t overlook their cultural alignment with your organization’s staff. For example, my organization has opted not to partner with clients when there’s a lack of alignment between our team and theirs. It’s wasted effort and resources for both sides when you don’t see eye-to-eye on core objectives.
The truth is, the best MSP for you will vary from others. That’s because your organization is unique in its needs and culture. In an era where the fastest business to market has a higher likelihood of surviving in the long term, it’s no surprise that having the right MSP by your side is more critical than ever.
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