What if Managed Services Isn’t For You?
We’ve talked before about Managed Services, a relationship that organizations use to obtain IT services exclusively from a 3rd party, aka an MSP (Managed Service Provider). The MSP industry was pretty much created from the statement “an MSP can provide complete IT services for an organization cheaper and more effectively than employees hired by that organization.” And you know what? That’s very often true, especially in smaller-medium organizations that don’t have overwhelmingly unique IT requirements.
But is there a way to get the best of both worlds? A situation where an organization can have a combination of both internal IT employees and a Managed Service Provider that is cheaper and more effective (and secure) then an exclusive use of either?
Yup. And that’s Co-Managed IT services. As many of you know, I’m kind of the industry guru. I’ve written the only books on the topic, and speak frequently at conferences, webinars and other events on the topic. And in my opinion there are 3 types of service agreements organizations can enter into.
Subscriptions. This is where an organization is choosing an MSP to get SAAS or HAAS for their IT needs. Products like MS 365, Azure, AWS, even firewalls, servers and hardware. Relatively low cost for the client company (versus getting it directly from the vendor).
Silo-IT. Silo-IT is where a distinct subset of IT is the distinct responsibility of the MSP. Some examples of this would be Microsoft 365, Data/device backups and continuity, Database/BI. We have a video for that as well!
CoMITs. CoMITs is an integrated approach to IT support. With CoMITs, the MSP applies their STMPs (Software, Tools, Methodologies and Portals) and empowers the internal IT folk to use them to support the organization. You can further delegate the support responsibilities between the MSP and Internal IT folks (we call those options Full, Desktop and Server CoMITs).
The nice thing is that each of these agreements offer a level of value from the MSP directly to the client without alienating the Internal IT folks. And there’s enough flexibility in all of these offerings so that the client can have a solution that directly works with their needs while the MSP has enough consistency, so they don’t need unique solutions to every client. Internal IT wins. MSP wins. Client wins. If you talk to an MSP about their offerings, make sure they actually have something defined in place and aren’t just winging it. With all this winning, think I’m going to go buy a lottery ticket. Ahhhh…no.