Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have consistently proven themselves in helping businesses focus on their core competencies by managing non-mission-critical functions. This happens when non-core business functions are handed off to an MSP with well-defined SLAs and expectations. MSPs routinely handle IT processing and operations functions, hiring, and customer support. But the landscape is changing, and so are MSPs.
With the digitization of processes and functions, MSPs are moving into the next phase of this evolution and focusing their efforts to help businesses to make those leaps. Positive developments include more than just SLAs, such as incorporating business goals and bringing specialists on board to add organizational knowledge, enhancing organizational capabilities, and expediting transformation.
Here are various functional areas in which an MSP can become a valued business partner to the organization, given the right synergies exist.
Application and Data Security Services
With the constant threat of security breaches and social media data scandals, businesses are rightfully concerned with keeping their applications and data secure. Here is where a good MSP can guide and protect the enterprise from mistakes that could cost the business its livelihood.
Perimeter management of the network and vulnerability testing of software are some common services outsourced to an MSP. From white hat hacking of applications and systems for potential failure identification to managing changes in design to tighten security overall, a specialized Security MSP can help keep a business as safe as possible. MSPs have a vested interest in keeping up with the latest encryption technologies and eliminating issues with privacy and security – it’s only by proving their efficacy that they can keep existing clients and attract new ones.
This lets the business get on with serving its customers and allows the experts to handle the security. It is a field that is continuously changing with the bad guys getting smarter at a speed that is hard to keep up with and challenging to handle.
A cross-platform security suite implemented within the enterprise and monitored by an MSP is one of the best ways of securing organizational assets, whether on the public cloud or otherwise. A centrally administered, hybrid security solution gives the MSP as well as in-house IT admins complete visibility across all cloud data, applications, and infrastructure, and helps deal with security vulnerabilities in real-time.