WHITEPAPER
Selecting A Managed
Service Provider
As the technological needs of today’s business become more varied, complex and critical, the resources set aside to address those needs are often stretched to their breaking point. Reliability, security and flexibility in supporting the needs of an organization’s user base: the demands required of a robust IT infrastructure often test or even exceed the budgetary capacity available to meet them. For most organizations today, 80% of IT resources are devoted to simply maintaining day-to-day operations, and the related costs of maintenance and repair are rising faster than budgets.
Every business today depends on the ability to execute quality communications across a network built from converged technologies, relying on efficient interoperability - a complex task that can either resolve an IT budget crisis or escalate it. More and more frequently, businesses are turning to Managed Service Providers (MSP) to help bridge the gap between IT resource limits and the everyday demands of critical business processes. By assuming responsibility for monitoring and maintaining your telecommunications infrastructure, an MSP can streamline your operations and offer a wide variety of other important advantages including:
› Proactive support, with real time, continuous analysis of your technology strengths and weaknesses
› Staying up to date with the latest revisions, patches and technology advancements available in today’s data management industry, minimizing potential business interruptions
› The ability to reduce staff, costs and complexity in your IT infrastructure
› More stable, reliable and secure business processes
› Enhanced actionable intelligence on how your available IT resources can be most efficiently deployed
› Greater options for advancing strategic IT initiatives, by eliminating many of the day-to-day operational tasks that often consume available technology resources
› More effectively managing product EOL issues and product line replacements
Likewise, a poor MSP fit can cause a variety of problems, ultimately costing even more money while resulting in diminished efficiencies, less actionable intelligence and even an illusion of security where it may not in fact exist. Selecting a Managed Service Provider for your organization, therefore, is a process that should not be taken lightly or without a comprehensive plan for success.
Being Proactive: The Strategy That Guides All Others
When the lion’s share of an organization’s IT budget is devoted to maintaining everyday operations, reaction becomes the strategy of the day. Often a problem or service outage only becomes evident when critical processes go down or user impacts begin accumulating, leading to a frantic rush of service calls, expensive repair costs and long operational downtimes. Clearly more proactive maintenance strategies are required to avoid network outage nightmares. But how can today’s IT organization reconcile growing infrastructure management needs with the hard realities of limited budgets, evolving technologies, employee attrition and growing security dangers?
Selecting the right MSP can empower your business to take a proactive approach to the challenges of IT growth, adopting a goal of preventing downtime rather than simply responding quickly to downtime.
A Managed Service Provider can monitor your entire network from a remote NOC (network operations center), providing your team with detailed, real time data on the complete operational status of your infrastructure and applications. Impending problems can be identified and addressed long before they become critical failures. This steady stream of actionable intelligence can offer your organization important advantages when it comes time to review maintenance contracts and vendor agreements, smoothing the technology EOL (end of life) process and empowering you to verify promised efficiencies.
For most organizations
today, 80% of IT
resources are devoted
to simply maintaining
day-to-day operations...
Most importantly, the data provided by a best-fit MSP will provide your business with a constant flow of
verifiable technology benchmarks that you can then use to evaluate the ongoing efficiency of your own business processes in an ongoing cycle of continually increasing quality.
Evaluating Your IT Management Needs
Every organization is different. Different histories, different experiences, different goals and different day-to-day needs: no “one size fits all” MSP service or solution will ever be an ideal fit for every business. Before signing a long term contract or settling on a management solution that later could turn out to be insufficient and overly expensive, you should carefully evaluate your own needs with a cold, clear eye to the realities of your organization.
Are your own long term IT goals clearly articulated? A proactive strategy to IT services management requires a long term
approach, clearly stated within a strategic assessment of your organization’s strengths and weaknesses.
Will your network need to support an increasing number of highly mobile workers? Will telepresence and video conferencing play a role in your future communications needs? Do you currently have VOIP (Voice Over IP) integrated into your data network, or are you planning for a VOIP transition in the future? A quality MSP partner should be ready to offer vendor agnostic advice and guidance, if needed, to ensure that your IT goals are clearly defined and effectively met. 3. Loss or Theft of Device.
Will your business require structural changes? One of the most common mistakes made by organizations seeking to adopt an MSP solution is to underestimate the changes required on their own part, believing instead that the managed service solution is simply a cheaper replacement for their own IT organization. In order to make best use of the new stream of quality and real time intelligence, your business will need to make some process adaptations. Your MSP should be capable and prepared to provide your business with the guidance it needs to make these changes. Be prepared for them.
Can anything be learned from past efforts? While many businesses are new to the idea of partnering with an outside agency to monitor and maintain their data infrastructure, others have attempted such a transition before and failed. If your organization has experienced failed MSP implementations in the past, carefully assess what went wrong. Where did unexpected costs turn up? How were your needs unmet? How did the experience add unnecessary complexity to your business processes? Learning from past efforts can help ensure that the next one will be a success.
The Managed Services Provider That You Should Look For
Once you have adequately defined your organization’s needs and success metrics, you are ready to begin the process of evaluating and selecting the Managed Services Provider that will provide the best fit for your business. In order to best realize your goals and long term efficiency benefits, your search process should focus on the following issues.
Availability of proactive 24/7/365 support. A reputable MSP should not profit from problems, but from the avoidance of downtime. Does this company provide constant monitoring, with a complete network of pre-failure indicators designed to quickly alert you if a risk of pre-failure is developing? Will they support your entire data and voice infrastructure, or only one aspect of it? Does this provider have a clearly designed plan for keeping MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) as short as possible in the event of failure? Make sure that your new MSP can swiftly address small problems before they become big ones.
A proactive strategy to
IT services management
requires a long term
approach, clearly
stated within a strategic
assessment of your
organization’s strengths
and weaknesses.
Depth of vendor-agnostic expertise. Be wary of large, single-vendor solutions that lack the flexibility and customer support necessary to meet your organization’s unique needs. Instead, look for an MSP that offers vendor-agnostic expertise, selecting from among the finest vendors and industry technologies available to provide the best options for your business. Your MSP should play the role of your trusted technology advisor and partner, providing a holistic maintenance approach that addresses all of your voice and data needs without favoritism to a single vendor or platform.
Industry reputation and satisfied customers. The right MSP for your business should be able to back up their claims with customer references and quantifiable success metrics. Ask for them. Likewise, a truly vendor-agnostic provider should also have strong established relationships with major equipment and software vendors, and be able to negotiate advantageous pricing and maintenance contract terms on your behalf. Make sure that your MSP can appropriately represent your IT resource interests.
Comprehensive reporting and communication. Does this MSP regularly collect operational data and have a clear, established process in place for converting that
information into better purchasing and IT management decisions? Your final choice for MSP should be viewed as a collaborative extension of your IT organization, providing monthly status reports and quarterly business reviews, while continually reevaluating your IT network metrics and maintenance data to create better predictive models of your monthly budgetary needs. The chain of communication between your team and the MSP team should be clear, direct and easy to navigate. When you need support, you should have it available immediately.
Remote management. In reality, most problems that arise in IT infrastructures can be quickly identified and fixed from
a remote location. Will your MSP require a steady onsite presence? If so, find out exactly why, and what benefits their presence will provide to your business. Your MSP should provide comprehensive remote services management and not have to spend large amounts of time and effort at your office locations.
Full security management. Will your MSP services include security management, such as firewall monitoring and patch applications? Do they offer remote data backup storage, preserving your most valuable data offsite at their NOC (network operations center)? Do they have the expertise to ensure that your firewall and border controller systems are correctly programmed and adequately maintained? Don’t settle for a solution that doesn’t fully meet your organization’s IT security needs.
Contracts and pricing. Carefully review your MSP’s contract terms before signing. Are promised discounts delivered at the start of the contract, or only upon completion of a long 5-10 year term of service? Is your MSP willing to contract a relatively short, 1-3 year introductory term of service that will better enable you to evaluate their performance and fit with your company?
Take a careful look at how MACs (Moves/Adds/Changes) are managed in your agreement. Are a set number of MACs included in the agreement, or are you going to be invoiced for each one on a per-incident basis? By reviewing and comparing contract terms early in the MSP selection process, you can avoid unexpected maintenance cost overruns that can diminish efficiencies and weaken the advantages you gain by moving to an MSP-based IT arrangement.
Be wary of large,
single-vendor solutions that lack
the flexibility and customer
support necessary to meet
your organization’s unique
needs.
Moving Forward and Minimizing Risk
When selecting a Managed Services Provider for your organization, big is not always better. All-encompassing solutions from the largest industry names can lack customization options, intimate vendor-customer
partnerships and flexible contract options. Once you have a short list of MSP vendors available for review, proceed forward with a careful evaluation process that minimizes your risks while providing the maximum amount of useful information regarding each vendor’s capabilities and costs.
Start small and build. Be wary of jumping into an enterprise-wide solution tied to a ten year contract that leaves you with few options if things don’t work out. Will your MSP be willing to sign a short term contract that places the imperative on them to perform?
Get live demonstrations. Many MSP sales forces lead with presentations. Insist on a live demonstration of their technologies and processes, and quantifiable evidence that they can deliver on their promises. Ask how they plan to deliver services as your technology choices continue to evolve in the future. Will you be responsible for future development costs required in order to meet your changing technology needs?
Verify equal visibility. Will your MSP provide internal IT staff with access to all the same real-time data that the MSP’s NOC sees, or will you only receive regular reporting and metric summaries? Equal visibility, with sophisticated health metrics available at a glance, empowers your IT department to make more informed critical business decisions when crisis strikes. Waiting for a manufacturer or support vendor to call you back when your users are in the dark only ensures delay, frustration and ultimately loss of time and other crucial resources. Insisting on equal visibility gives your business an equal footing when making tough decisions - and the power, when trouble arrives, to distinguish between a two minute easy fix and more significant service impact. Again, ask for a demonstration.
SmartPoint By Carousel Industries
For organizations requiring premium support for disparate voice and data infrastructures, Carousel Industries offers SmartPoint: a comprehensive Managed Services solution designed to provide a powerful intelligence platform for intelligent IT planning. Built upon a unique deployment model that eliminates the need for
widespread device agent installations and complex VPN processes, SmartPoint offers a next-generation solution to the complex technology challenges of today’s business.
To learn more about Carousel Industries or SmartPoint, call us today at 800-401-0760 or visit us on the Web at www.carouselindustries.com.
