5 Core Services Your MSP Should Be Offering
By Matthew Hodson, Valeo Networks
Managed service providers (MSPs) are an increasingly valuable piece in today’s business world. With the constant reliance on technology, businesses are turning toward MSPs to help them manage and improve upon their IT infrastructures. Because business technology holds the keys to so many important aspects of business, MSPs can be an integral part of your success.
By partnering with an MSP, you will have access to budget-friendly solutions to protect and maintain the core of your business. Access to the resources provided by an MSP means you get peace of mind, while also gaining resources to further scale your business to where you’d like it to be.
What exactly do you get from an MSP’s service offerings? How can you be sure that trusting an MSP is the right move for your company?
There are certain core service offerings that you can expect when bringing an MSP on to work alongside you and your business. All these offerings bring unique benefits to your day to day operations, as well as the long-term outlook of your company. Within each of these core contributions, there are ancillary benefits that keep your business moving forward. The fact is your MSP can put your business in a unique position to succeed and stay protected.
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity refers to the process of protecting all your business’s systems, networks, and general IT infrastructure from outside threats and digital attacks. Typically, threats will seek businesses with digital vulnerabilities so that they can easily access sensitive information. If these threats can infiltrate the digital world of your business, all your sensitive information can be destroyed or possibly held ransom to extort money from you.
Cybersecurity from an MSP is the most effective way of keeping your business technology out of harm's way. The harder a threat must work to get past cybersecurity, the more likely that threat will move on to lower hanging fruit. In cases where a threat does manage to break through the protection in place, your MSP’s cybersecurity measures will greatly lessen the blow from an attack and get you back up to full speed in no time.
Cloud-Based Solutions
The Cloud is a service that is becoming present just about everywhere you look in the business world. The idea behind cloud-based solutions is that it takes all your networks, storage items, and other resources and has them all run off an outside infrastructure. This service can accomplish things like day to day efficiency, lessening the burden on your servers, and providing more scaling opportunities.
Migrating your business to the cloud is something your MSP can assist you with or even take the entire process over for you. The team will evaluate your security requirements, budget, and data before starting the migration process. When all is said and done, you should have a more efficiently run machine.
Vendor Management
Dealing with all the vendors that help keep your day to day operations up and running can be a burden for any business owner. Partnering with an MSP means that you can offload a lot of this stress, if not all of it, by utilizing their vendor management services.
You’re used to managing your employees and holding them accountable for the work they do. It would be difficult for you to take on that same responsibility for outside vendors as well. This is where your MSP comes in. They can handle all communication with these vendors and hold them accountable for bringing what they need to bring to the table for everything to run smoothly. This will allow you to keep your attention on where it needs to be: your business.
24/7 Network Monitoring And Support
The goal of any MSP will be to keep your business up and running at all times, experiencing the least amount of downtime possible. To accomplish this, you’ll need someone keeping a watchful eye on your network 24/7. Through 24/7 network monitoring and support, your MSP can catch and prevent threats from interfering with your business, even after office hours. It also means that anytime you need assistance with something IT related, you have a support system in place to reference.
The truth is it only takes a few minutes for something disastrous to happen with your network. For this reason, the importance of this 24/7 network monitoring cannot be overstated.
Backup And Disaster Recovery
Partnering with an MSP means you get access to contingency plans in case something goes wrong. If something does happen to affect your business operations, you want to minimize the downtime that could come along with it. Your MSP will have a plan to accomplish this and get you back up and running as quickly as possible.
With backup and disaster recovery services, you not only have a backup of all your data and resources, but also a recovery plan in case the unforeseen happens. The backup portion ensures you have that copy of everything to restore when the time comes. The recovery portion of this service is the actual action that will be taken to get this backup online and your business up and running again, with as little loss of revenue as possible.
About The Author
Since he was 17 years old, Matthew Hodson has been advising clients on industrywide best practices. That journey has taken him (and Valeo Networks) around the world before settling down right here in Phoenix. For over 20 years, Matthew has led the way for Valeo Networks with a keen eye for industry developments, a resolute approach to even the most stubborn technical issues, and a desire to help each customer find out exactly what they need to succeed.