In a bid to gain an edge in the competitive marketplace, many organizations are imbibing emerging technologies like cloud, AI, and ML into their business processes. However, the implementation of such technologies is unwittingly breeding a diverse and complex hybrid IT environment.
These complex IT environs typically span multiple business models, processes, and data, making it complicated and costly for organizations. Enterprises which rely solely on their efforts to manage such environs are simply sub-optimal at delivering on their core business agendas. Taking cognizance of this conundrum, IT Managed Services Providers (MSPs) have come to the fore.
Managed IT services feature a range of capabilities, providing more potential than ever for IT organizations to transform, grow, and innovate. With MSPs, clients can focus on more business-critical activities and achieve better results. But there’s a catch. With a plethora of possible MSPs, it could be a tightrope walk for clients to choose the right one for their organization.
This blog will help you figure out what to look for when selecting an MSP.
6 Traits to Look for When Choosing an MSP
As a matter of fact, all MSPs are not equal. There’s a broad spectrum of external IT service providers a company can choose from. How do you pick the right one? Here’s the criteria that helps you choose an effective MSP:
1. Skillset and Expertise
Any MSP must possess specialized skill sets that go beyond basic IT maintenance and availability management. Enquire about their skills related to end-to-end capabilities, security, cloud tech, cross-platform integration, among others. Also, ask about the availability and scalability of their services and their collaboration practices. Moreover, an IT MSP must have expertise across all delivery models, including but not limited to managed services, cloud, traditional IT, and outsourcing. With this approach, you will have a managed service provider who would cater to all your evolving business needs.
2. Proactive and Tech-Based
An effective MSP follows a proactive approach that empowers clients in failure prevention and continuous improvement. Look for this attribute in your provider. Moreover, find out whether the external service provider employs sophisticated technologies that provide high visibility across all your platforms and processes which will aid in intelligent monitoring, and automated workload prioritization.
3. Support for All Clouds
Today’s cloud ecosystem has a host of cloud strategies, including public, private, multi, and hybrid clouds. Moreover, organizations are harnessing the services of multiple cloud vendors to meet their needs. Assess whether the MSP has the minimum proven experience handling multivendor, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments. The right IT managed service provider should be able to help you plan, buy, manage and operate across multiple cloud models and vendors. Moreover, ensure that the MSP has strong relationships with leading cloud vendors. Take, for instance, Veritis, which has proven experience in dealing with top cloud platforms, including but not limited to AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle Cloud. As a US-based cloud managed services provider, Veritis provides the entire gamut of cloud services encompassing the public, private, hybrid, and multi clouds.
4. Portfolio and Flexibility
Ensure that the MSP offers a broad portfolio of managed services, including application management services, managed cloud, managed security, and managed IT infrastructure services. Also, look whether the provider offers flexibility in doing business with you, such as giving you the options ranging from no vendor lock-in to pay-as-you-go pricing models.
5. Performance-Based SLA’s
Ensure that your MSP is willing to commit to performance-based service-level agreements. In this way, the responsibility for performance rests with the managed services provider. Moreover, foster those commitments with fines or other consequences if those agreements are not met.
6. Global Reach and Local Expertise
An MSP with global reach and capabilities can help your organization grow and expand in today’s diversified marketplace. They present many benefits, including handling client projects that span multiple nations, local language support, and local-level compliance requirements.
Capping It Off
There’s no question the digital world is evolving quickly, making it difficult for organizations to stay abreast. Roping in an MSP will not only help you ride on the coattails of emerging technologies but also increase your learning curve and time-to-value. Your search for the right MSP ends at Veritis.
With over a decade-long experience in offering IT managed services, Veritis can help you stay relevant in this highly competitive market. We bring industry-leading expertise and capabilities to help you identify your requirements and realize an integrated multisourcing strategy. Join forces with us today to focus on creating value and innovation rather than operating chores.
