Managed IT services or Managed Services also called outsourced IT services, is a third-party service that offers IT, infrastructure, and other technical support services to small, medium, and even large-enterprise organizations. A company that offers such types of services to businesses is also referred to as Manger Services Provider (MSP).
An MSP that offers services to its clients; can vary widely, including general IT support, cybersecurity services, VoIP solutions, backup and disaster recovery, and more. MSPs are often approached when businesses lack in trained in-house IT team or they prefer the benefits and expertise of MSP.
Adapting modern IT approaches for small and medium organizations is quite challenging, and a huge number of businesses are relying on outside partners to outsource some or all parts of their IT services due to rapid change in technology and a lack of trained manpower. The IT managed services market is growing exponentially and according to industry experts, the IT managed services market will reach £356 billion by 2025. MSPs cover a broad spectrum of managed services for every type of organization and business. A business should know what options and services they are needed because choosing the right services options can be a big hurdle in itself.
What is a Managed Service Provider?
A Managed Service Provider or an MSP is responsible to manage the IT echo system with complete effectiveness and productivity while securing the IT system by implementing cybersecurity standards, best practices, and avoiding any downtime. MSP is a third-party company that remotely manages all or some parts of the IT infrastructure of an organization such as network infrastructure, security, etc. Businesses hire them to perform a defined set of day-to-day tasks and management services. An MSP offers several services for any type of business on a subscription basis where businesses can utilize the benefits of any or all of these services on their requirements.
Different Types of Managed Services
There are several types of IT Managed Services offered by the MSPs, and one thing that needs to remember is that not all MSPs offer the same or all kinds of services. But, for a business, it is good to know the requirements which they want to hire an MSP opt for and also what services an MSP is offering.
The following are different types of IT managed services that are commonly provided by most of the MSPs:
Managed Networks and Infrastructure
Managed network and infrastructure services are normally used for high-performance, secure, and cost-effective networking for a company or business, including managed IP VPNs, managed hosting, and storage services. An MSP will provide these services to any business through a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Some other services including managed WANs, LAN, managed gateways, and automated networks also fall in this category and this type of managed support reduces the overall ownership costs that are involved in supporting these services.
Managed Support Services
Managed support services offer a facility for your staff to coordinate with a well-trained remote team who is mostly 24×7 available for smoothly running your business.
Managed support services offered by an MSP, depends on the SLA including software, hardware, and other support services. The major goal of obtaining MSP services is to manage applications remotely for your business and solve potential issues quickly without involving your staff. MSPs ensure timely resolution of any issue with zero downtime, increase your productivity, profitability, and cost-efficiency as a dedicated and trained team is looking after your infrastructure.
Managed Security Services
Managed security service offers a wide range of IT managed security solutions including antivirus, malware protection, patch management, and several other security updates, that are managed remotely by an MSP. Security services are key factors for any organization and a prime responsibility. So, many organizations and businesses outsource their managed security services to an MSP for better security.
Managed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
One of the widely used services offered by an MSP is a Managed SaaS, where an MSP offers preconfigured software solution on a subscription-base to the clients on agreed SLA. The SaaS could be software developed and implemented by the MSP itself or an MSP makes it accessible and manageable for the clients from a third party and will ensure all updates, patches, and upgrades are remotely installed, guaranteeing your service is always available, kept at the optimal level, and allowing client’s staff to remain focused on their business requirements.
Managed Data Analytics Services
MSPs are nowadays being widely used in the analyzing and acquisition of data that can be used in organization’s strategies for optimizing their entire business model, and previously, this type of service is used to track the traffic at different times throughout the day. With said analyzed data, businesses target the market to run their marketing campaigns and formulate marketing strategies. MSPs offer their services for the clients to analyze a certain set of data to evaluate network performance and other KPIs for the client that helps in improving workflows and automation of the business processes.
Managed Cloud Infrastructure Services
In managed cloud infrastructure services, an MSP manages the computing, storage, networks, and management of their client’s infrastructure, and also incorporates the tools, databases, and other important services that run with the infrastructure. Managed cloud infrastructure service is normally built from a selection of functions and services chosen by the client itself and an MSP is responsible to deliver.
Managed cloud infrastructure services are better for the businesses that are operating globally as it is easy to incorporate and cost-efficient for the businesses, and these cloud-based services must always meet the requirements of the client, and client can focus on his core business while the rest of the infra will be managed by an MSP.
Managed Communications Services
A managed communications service offers a range of communication infrastructure that combines data, voice, and video services onto the same IP network, and can also easily transfer data, documents, images, and other necessary and relevant information to company computers from any location across the globe.
Managed Print Services
Managed print services allow remote assistance with data and file infrastructure and are normally best suited for organizations with complex file management requirements.
It also allows remote monitoring, management, and updating of the management structure of an organization in terms of documentation, meaning that gaining transparency and control over your business printing services.
Benefits of Managed Services
IT managed services are extremely beneficial for many businesses as they rely on some key factors that ensure less downtime, peace of mind, and remote handling of issues. The following are top benefits of IT managed services that offer:
- Cost-efficiency
- Less downtime as experienced IT team is always available
- Improved security
- Access to cutting edge technology without investing too much
- Workload sharing on existing staff
- Peace of mind
- A practical approach to solve IT-related issues
- Another experienced IT team that helps the internal IT team
- Increased availability to cloud services, and
- Remote handling of IT issues
Characteristics of MSPs
If you are interested to invest in IT Managed Services, you need to establish an essential criterion for what you need and understand what makes a third-party services provider a trusted source is critical for your organization.
The following are some characteristics of MSPs that should be considered while contracting them:
- Responsive: An MSP that is responsive and provides 24/7 technical support in a faster and better way.
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Pricing: An MSP should have a flexible pricing model for different businesses and resources to fulfill customers’ needs.
- Security: It should have adequate and robust security measures to protect against any data loss.
- Backup and Recovery Options: It should have proper backup, recovery, and replication features to save data in case of any downtime or disaster occurs.
- Various Options: An MSP covers a wide range of services where businesses could meet their needs all in one place.
- Accessibility: Customer should have access to his/her information from any secure place of the world, whether the office or a mobile device.
Conclusion
MSPs offer a wide range of IT services for small, medium, and large enterprises from general IT support, network infrastructure, security, SaaS, data analytics, and many more to keep your company business and network running smoothly. MSPs are pretty competitive and skillful in this modern era of technology and offer vital services and infrastructure to keep your business and data safe, so you can grow safely and smoothly.
If you find your business is suffering from IT problems, either small troubleshooting errors, massive performance drops, or looking for advanced IT services without spending a huge budget, it’s worth looking into an MSP to solve your problems.
NAKIVO Inc., one of the best fast-growing software companies dedicated to protecting physical, virtualized, and cloud environments, introduced its new program for managed service providers (MSPs) with a new monthly subscription program that allows MSPs to provide their customers with VM backup, VM replication, granular restore, and site recovery, with NAKIVO Backup & Replication.
The new backup program from NAKIVO introduces a simple and low-cost multi-hypervisor monthly per-machine subscription licensing, where a machine can either be a VMware VM, a Hyper-V VM, or a Nutanix AHV VM and regardless of the underlying hypervisor or platform, each VM is protected and counted as one machine. MSPs gain access to all of the new features of NAKIVO Backup & Replication, which can be used across all of their customers, and they can pay based on usage per VM, where pricing starts at just $1.6 per VM/per month.