These days, it seems like IT MSPs, which stand for Managed Service Providers, are popping up on every corner. Each of the providers will be ready to help you securely back up your data, move your sensitive data to the cloud, or to take control over your IT infrastructure by monitoring and supporting your company. Although it does sound good, not all who will take over your business systems are fit to manage them. In order to help you sort through and go around claims of knowledge and experience, in this article you will be able to read about the things an MSP will not well you, and those things are quite important since they might ruin your business. Let’s take a look.
The MSP lacks the needed experience and skills
During the first day, an MSP should have skills that go beyond the needed operating system maintenance. When you ask about the skills that someone has, you will want to go beyond the basic questions about headcounts and certifications. The right MSP technician will be able to answer questions about the availability and scalability of the staff. You should ask them questions about security, databases, mobility, virtualization, managing changes, cross-platform integration, and cloud technologies.
The MSP uses a reactive, not proactive approach to IT service management
There are two approaches that someone can take, one is more superior, while the other is inferior:
- Reactive approach – the break/fix mentality, which means that they will fix something when it is needed
- Proactive approach – to prevent and improve the systems, which means that they will monitor the systems in order to prevent something from breaking down
As you already know, it is better to prevent something from happening, than to fix it when it breaks.
The MSP does not align with the company’s practices
A skilled MSP will only follow the industry’s best practices. They will also invest their time and training to get all 5 ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) certifications:
- Founder level – entry level
- Practitioner level – improvement level
- Intermediate level – which contains two categories: service lifestyle and service capability
- Expert level – where they will be able to show knowledge of the ITIL scheme entirely
- Master level – where they can explain and justify how an IT business outcome will work
If the provider did not reach all the levels, you should ask them what level are they on and how soon can they move to the next one.
The MSP uses inconsistent processes and limited service visibility
Consistent service delivery is built on logical processes. You should ask the service provider to tell you some examples of policy and process documentation. Let them explain how they can replicate across several delivery centers and which logical operations are used.
The MSP does not have support or strong relationships for multi-vendor environments
Your IR infrastructure is closely tied together with software, hardware, and network products from a wide range of vendors. A service provider should have working experience with multi-vendor environments, meaning that they will be able to work with different sectors and partners. Partnerships with leading vendors are becoming more important. The relationships will keep the MSP up to date, as well as recommend product change, and new technologies that become available.
Conclusion
As you were able to read from this article, it is important to find out if the IT managed service provider has the right knowledge and skills to take over the IT infrastructure of your company. For more information, visit this website.
