Technology has played a major role in transforming the modern day business procedures. Whether you are running a small ecommerce business or in the research field, you need to have a robust technological infrastructure in your premise in order to harness the benefits of the innovative and unique technologies. There are various technological solutions available in the market but a business needs to choose a solution according to his need and specification. But many business owners think that just installing a robust IT infrastructure will be enough to reap the advantage of the available technology. You should know that along with owning a robust IT infrastructure, you also need to manage it properly.
Keeping an IT infrastructure up and running is one of the biggest hassles for any business as keeping a complex IT infrastructure up and running is a time-consuming and complicated process. Most of the small and medium sized business owners wear many hats and that’s why they are not able to give time to their IT infrastructure.
BY choosing an MSP, businesses are able to offload the hassle of IT maintenance in the MSP and they are able to focus on their core job. So, in this blog post, we will understand everything about an MSP in a detailed way.
What is an MSP?
An MSP is a specialized company that remotely manages the IT infrastructure of a company on a proactive basis. This remote management of IT infrastructure is provided by the MSP on a subscription basis model. In the modern day world, both the terms cloud service provider and managed service provider are used interchangeably, especially when the service provided is supported by a service level agreement and the service is provided over the internet.
History of MSP
MSP is not a completely new concept as its evolution started during 1990 when application service providers entered the market. The ASP made the development of cloud computing easier and helped companies providing remote support to customer’s IT infrastructure. During the initial stage, MSPs focused on RMM only which stands for remote management and monitoring. With advancement of time MSPs have widened their scope of service and they have also been able to shape their service to make it impeccable.
Types of MSP
There are some MSPs in the market which are specialized with a particular type of service like data storage or firewall management while there are some MSPs that offer wide range of managed services like NOC support, managed IT services, managed router service and much more. Some MSPs focus on only a particular type of industry like healthcare, finance, legal, manufacturing, etc.
Pricing model of MSPs
Different types of MSPs charge differently and that’s why in order to make it easier for you to understand, we have included some of the most common types of pricing model below.
One of the most popular ways of charging clients in the MSP industry is the per device pricing in which the MSP charges the customer a flat fee for every device under its management. So, the more the number of devices, the more price you will have to pay to the MSP. Then comes the per-user pricing model which is very much famous in the cloud hosting industry. In this model, the MSP charges the client on the basis of per user basis. The last type of pricing is the all-inclusive pricing in which the MSP charges a flat fee for all the IT infrastructure support and management services, regardless of the number of the number of users and the number f devices being managed.
The two main benefits of choosing an MSP
There are many advantages of choosing an MSP and we are going to list some of them in this blog post.
Cost effectiveness
One of the main advantages of choosing an MSP is cost-effectiveness. You might be thinking that how can you save money through an MSP as you have to pay them a flat fee as well. But you should know that hiring an expert in-hose IT team is much expensive than paying fee to your chosen MSP. The MSP offers you the advantage of pay as you go model in which you have to pay for only those services which you use. This reduces the price of managing your IT infrastructure to a great extent.
Professional management of IT infrastructure
There is no doubt that in the fact that after choosing an MSP, you are able to offload all your IT management hassle on the MSP but in addition to this, you are also able to get your IT infrastructure managed professionally. Some complex IT infrastructure requires skilled and experienced IT professionals and that’s why you should always go for an MSP.