What is an MSP really?

MSPs want to be able to scale their business without adding lots of resources, as all businesses do. Further, SMEs want and need IT but they want it to be reliable and regular in its cost. Expenditure is a particularly tough area when you are a small business so early predictions of spend is vital. SMEs are also increasingly bringing new challenges to the IT support organisation – multiple branches, differing hardware and remote workers to name but a few. MSPs can accommodate all of these needs, but only if they alter and adapt their approach.

The break-fix model that has existed until now is past its prime and fails to attend to SMEs' current needs. In such a competitive environment, MSPs simply cannot deliver the depth, breadth or quality of service required using traditional on-site, engineer-based approaches. Such a reactive model does not deliver expectations. These can only be achieved via highly-integrated remote monitoring and automation.

Break-fix is reactive and as such, services are slow, and solutions can only be found when an engineer finally arrives. The customer effects configuration changes and updates which the engineer is unaware of, nor are the update and virus systems automated, making troubleshooting slow and based upon trial and error. What is perhaps worse is that this form of service – ‘selling hours’ – results in irregular invoicing, giving SMEs no ability to predict expenditure. Furthermore, the process is a burden on MSPs themselves as from one day to the next, they have no idea of how many engineers will be needed to be sent out, or even for how long.

These disadvantages are leading SMEs to abandon the idea of using MSPs, but although they cannot afford to use them, nor can they afford to appoint a dedicated and full-time chief information officer (CIO), and certainly not a one-off IT consultant. This leaves them very open to falling behind technically, and potentially therefore, also productively. A true MSP can provide a ‘fractional CIO’ – fractional in needs and costs, but not in performance.

But what is a ‘true’ MSP? The key comes in what the ‘M’ stands for. Technically and traditionally, it stands for ‘managed’ but the way that many MSPs conduct themselves at the moment, people would be forgiven for thinking it stood for ‘monitored’. Break-fix is monitoring not managing. Remote-access solutions and engineer dispatch are symptomatic of monitoring and reacting to problems, instead of acting proactively via automated processes in order to pre-empt the problem in the first place – i.e. managing.

By employing a truly management-based approach, viruses and basic software faults can be fixed via automated processes. This means that on the rare occasion that a fault is more serious and an engineer is actually needed, such mundane and routine causes can be discounted immediately, saving time on site and limiting the number of occasions when an engineer call-out is required – a benefit for the MSP and client alike.