Key CIO Concerns While Choosing an MSP

The main objectives of the organizations these days is digital transformation. Organizations are adopting new technologies like cloud, analytics, and mobile which are resulting in hybrid IT environments. Managing these hybrid IT environments can be a daunting task for the organizations because of shrinking IT budgets or flat IT budgets or simply because of lack of know-how. Organizations these days are weighing whether it is more valuable to have in-house delivery or to rely on a managed service provider.

The term “Managed Service Provider” has been in the industry for quite a long time. Managed Service Provider also known as Management Service Providers is a company that manages your IT Infrastructure remotely typically on a proactive basis or on a subscription model. Managed Service Providers have become a critical part of an organization’s day-to-day activities.

According to Research and Markets, “The managed services market is expected to grow from USD $152.45 billion in 2017 to USD $257.84 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 11.1%.

A Managed Service Provider manages your IT infrastructure with best industry practices along with providing high-class services for incident cases, changes, configuration, inventory, capacity, performance and multiple levels of reporting. These are the standard capabilities for benchmarking the MSP’s. But this makes it difficult for the CIO to take a decision while opting for a right Managed Service Provider (MSP) and is always a herculean task.  While ensuring the services are leveraged that suit your company, the subscription should also be the best fit for your budget and IT Infrastructure. Here are a few parameters to consider while choosing the right Managed Service Provider:

  • Knowing your Business: Does your Managed Service Provider really knows your business, goals, and objectives? A managed service provider would like to which cloud provider you use, if there are any specific resources you require to run your workloads and where your data is stored and your requirements to move your data. The right MSP will ask you these questions and more to provide you the right set of services as per your requirements.
  • Managing Complexity: Organizations are adopting new technologies like big data and other analytical tools that are adding complexity to the applications used by an organization. The right Managed Service provider should be able to handle the complexity at all levels along with the customization, integration, and deployment of the applications. It is always advisable to partner with a Managed Service Provider who has more experience in handling these complex implementations especially in Multi-cloud or Hybrid IT environment
  • Skill Sets: The right MSP will not only have experience in conventional network management, operating system availability and maintenance/troubleshooting issues but should go beyond these issues. One of the reasons organizations fail to benefit from the MSP’s is the limited skills in some specific technologies or industry. Make sure to clearly define the skill requirements, while evaluating the MSP’s. Industries like banking, healthcare or ERP should be critical when selecting the MSP.
  • Governance: Organizations should choose MSP who employ best industry practices for managing your IT infrastructure i.e. aligning with the ITIL approach to IT service management. The MSP you choose should seek to understand your security and regulatory compliance concerns – and have controls in place to address them. Look for a provider that uses approved remote support software and video records support sessions for a complete audit trail. If regulatory compliance is a concern, ask the provider if they can align support services to ISO or Service Desk Institute standards.
  • 24 x 7 x 365 Remote Monitoring: While selecting the right MSP to make sure that your MSP has dedicated 24 x 7 x 365 monitoring system. Choose an MSP that can identify the problem before it arises and disrupts your network reducing your downtime. Your MSP should be able to provide you 24 x 7 x 365 monitoring of all workstations, servers, networks, devices, firewalls etc regardless of the location. 
  • Flexibility across Environments: An MSP should have experience across all environments i.e. private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. Organizations are adopting new technologies and multi-structured strategies; your MSP should be able to adapt to the changes and the needs of your organization.

While choosing the MSP for your organization make sure that your MSP not only addresses your day-to-day issues but is also able to address the critical issues to streamline your business.

Looking for a Managed Service Provider for your organization? We at iMicron, bundle managed IT solutions with the core cloud solutions offerings. Our managed services take on the 360-degree responsibility of the entire IT operations of the organization, including 24X7 monitoring, IT support on demand as well as problem resolution. iMicron IT managed services are not only for compute instances but also for Content Management systems, Databases, DevOps and Enterprise solutions. For more information click here or send us an email at sales@imicron.com

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