The justification and rationale for partnering with managed service providers (MSPs) have changed substantially in just the last few years, as has the role of MSPs themselves. Once seen as a place to dump low-value tasks that couldn’t be done efficiently by in-house IT resources, MSPs have become a crucial tool for supporting digital transformation.
Of the many reasons for today’s higher-level partnership between IT and MSPs, the most important include:
- Access to scarce or hard-to-find skills: As the fundamental building blocks of infrastructure change, MSPs can provide skills in new technologies such as containers or machine learning and expertise in areas such as integration architecting. One reason that these skills can be hard to find is that many practitioners prefer to work with MSPs because they provide interesting engagements and allow them to focus narrowly on what they do best.
- A short-term need for expertise: Many major projects require skill or knowledge for only a particular phase. Hiring staff with that skill makes little sense, so renting it from an MSP is the best alternative.
- Fast project initiation: When time to solution is a critical metric, getting the project underway quickly is essential. One good way to do that is to work with an MSP that already has a team with the requisite skills in place because that eliminates the need to find, hire, and train staff.
- A way to leverage experience: The experience gained from completing a project the first time makes success more likely in future iterations of the same type of project. When an organization hires an MSP, it is gaining experience and improving its chances of success.
MSPs have gone from being occasional providers of certain services to true partners for the IT team. (In fact, the acronym MSP should probably be updated to stand for “managed service partner.”) MSPs offer the agile, focused, and effective skills that provide important leverage for IT teams. In addition, the speed of project execution that MSPs deliver is central to enabling improved digital agility. Maverick has broad experience successfully supporting numerous customers as an MSP.
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