What is a Managed Service Provider?

by | Mar 29, 2016 | IT Services

What is a managed IT service provider? A managed service provider (MSP) is now a widely accepted technology term for a team of IT specialists that take responsibility for a company’s hardware, software, and network infrastructure maintenance and support. The type of maintenance that an MSP typically offers is a proactive approach by monitoring and alerting potential threats and weaknesses in the technology structure.

The concept of managed IT services was born from the desire for a managed IT company to provide their customers with a higher level of support, replacing the once popular break-fix method. A break-fix method is as it sounds – something in your company’s technology structure has stopped functioning correctly, and you call your IT provider to have them fix the problem. This method made sense when the resources were unavailable for MSPs to provide proactive support to their customers. This support can help you handle hardware issues, software issues, and IT cost concerns.

Hardware Issues

Break-Fix: You call your IT provider because your computer just died after seven years.

MSP: Your managed IT services provider has met with you to advise you that your computer product specifications say your computer may not last much longer and needs replacing.

Software Updates

Break-fix: You endlessly Google how a software update will be different from its previous versions and try to understand all of the new features.

MSP: Your MSP has notified you that the new software update is coming, well in advance, and how the changes will affect your business. Additionally, you have already received a notification of the latest software features that may benefit you.

IT Cost Concerns

Break-Fix: You’re having consistent issues with the software, hardware, or your network infrastructure. You never know what you’re going to pay each month because you can’t predict what will break or fail.

MSP: You’re paying a monthly retainer for managed IT services to have your products monitored and maintained. The number of times software, hardware, or your network infrastructure has issued significantly decreased since partnering with your MSP.

Many MSPs claim that their services will replace a reactive/break-fix support model altogether. Unfortunately, that only happens in a perfect world. You can have the best MSP in the world and, over time, still be unable to prevent some technical issues.

The MSP team at Revolution Group is composed of some of the most qualified IT professionals in the Columbus area. Our Technology Services Division as a part of our managed IT services is grouped into five specialized teams to ensure we provide our customers with top-of-the-line service to any company in Ohio.

  1. Reactive Support Team (Helpdesk) focuses on helping you with all of your technology struggles or questions. For instance, the reactive team at Revolution Group fields calls ranging from getting WiFi to connect on a phone when traveling to explaining how to change the font color in a Word document. You name it, they do it.
  2. Proactive Support Team sets up and monitors alerts and the overall health and security of your in-house technology. Then they can act on those alerts before they become disruptive to your business. This team’s primary focus is to prevent what is preventable. Things like natural disasters are not something they can control, but they do monitor weather in the area to put measures in place for possible storm outages. The Proactive Team also acts as a backup to our reactive support team.
  3. The Projects Team ensures that your projects run smoothly, on budget, and on time from start to finish. Projects might include Office 365 migrations, network upgrades, server virtualization, and hosted cloud services, to name a few.
  4. Account Managers are our team of industry veterans who meet with our clients on a monthly basis to discuss upcoming projects, helpdesk tickets, etc. The Account Manager is the customer’s liaison with the rest of the MSP team at Revolution Group.
  5. Virtual Chief Information Officers (vCIO) is a strategy component to the MSP offering. These industry experts will understand your business from a strategic standpoint and will offer guidance on what technology is the next step for your business. They are not salesmen and will not pressure or convince you to buy certain products or services. Instead, they are considered an extension of your internal executive team. For example, they could be concerned with your technology footprint and its impact on your bottom line.

Most daily work activities rely heavily on adequately functioning technology components. Allow Revolution Group to discover and fix your technology issues before they negatively affect your business with our managed IT services. To learn more about Revolution Group’s Managed IT team at our company, contact us today.

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