What Options Are Available Aside From an MSP?
There are a number of options aside from an IT Managed Service Provider (or MSP) to help you with IT needs for your organization.
Remember an MSP is essentially an extension of your company, your partner, one that’s going to monitor and manage your entire IT environment on an ongoing basis. If that’s not what you’re looking for there are plenty of other options for you before you hire your own internal IT.
Staff Augmentation/Temp Agency: Staff augmentation services provide temporary staffing to support specific projects, initiatives, or periods of increased demand. These services can help fill gaps in your existing IT team, provide specialized skills, and offer more flexibility than a traditional MSP agreement. Whether that’s a good thing? I leave that to you.
Project-Based Services: If you have a specific IT project that requires expertise outside of your existing IT team's capabilities, you can outsource the project to a specialized IT service provider. These providers can deliver a specific IT solution or project within a defined timeframe and budget. This alternative is when there’s something specific you need. No more, no less.
Cloud Service Providers: Cloud service providers offer a range of cloud-based IT services, such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). These services can be customized to your specific needs, provide scalability and flexibility, and can often be more cost-effective than traditional MSP services. Most cloud services are great when you need the service with little or no management, monitoring or modification. In other words, “out of the box”.
Freelance IT Consultants: Freelance IT consultants offer specialized IT expertise on a project-by-project basis. These consultants can provide a specific set of IT skills or services, and can often be more cost-effective than hiring a full-time employee or engaging a traditional MSP. Freelance consultants offer the most flexibility, but buyer beware. Usually, you’re getting the skills of only that one individual. And only for a specific time and bandwidth.
IT Outsourcing/Break-Fix Companies: IT outsourcing companies offer a range of IT services, including infrastructure management, user support, and more. These companies can provide a dedicated team of IT professionals to manage your IT needs, and can often offer more flexibility and scalability than a traditional MSP by only helping you when they need to, so you contact them with something breaks and the need to fix it. They’re not actually incentivized to be proactive.
The single most important thing here is to select the option that is appropriate for the job or need you have. If all you need is to have someone install a new printer, sure, generally speaking the neighbor kid could probably do that. You don’t need to contract out a project team to install a printer.
On the other hand, if you are looking to implement a new ERP system, move office spaces, or upgrade your servers, that would likely be beyond any one resource skillset and would likely require some sort of team effort and you’d want to look at outsourcing companies to manage those types of projects.
Since there’s a beginning and an end to those, it’s still not necessarily appropriate for a Managed Service Provider, because they are traditionally more focused on an ongoing relationship. Some MSP's will do project type work like this, and some will only do it for existing clients. It depends on the MSP and most are open to a conversation, so just ask.
Remember this. An MSP, just like full time employees, are there for the long haul, side by side with the rest of your organization. So they’ll know your needs better than any of the above solutions. And can probably handle most of your additional project, staff augmentation, and specific needs (or at least help you with them).
Check out our video on When Should You Not Use An MSP?
