What has your experience been with managed service providers (MSPs)?

Team & Organizational Design Outsourcing & Managed Services IT Strategy & Roadmap

1.2k views15 Comments

Sort By:

Oldest

Chief Technology Officer in Services (non-Government)2 years ago

There are a lot of managed service providers (MSPs) in Australia, but many of them are not very good. Most are struggling to make a profit and stay in business. We worked with one that was supposed to be good and had been around for a long time, which should give you some assurances. They also had a development arm, as many of these MSPs do. They all seem to have development arms and tech advisory boards, but their bread and butter is supposed to be outsourced admin work.

But for the MSP from whom we ended up getting resources, their entire business exists to clean up after everybody else because there are so many bad actors that are all trying to upsell you. And because I began at Kyco as a virtual CTO, I didn't see all the invoices until I became full-time. That’s when I said, "These numbers are ridiculous. We are being overcharged." And even the contracts were wrong because either the MSP was set up by tech people who were sloppy with the business side of things, or they were set up by business people who don't know enough about the tech side of things.

Head of Corp IT in Software2 years ago

MSP's are an option for an outsourced or partially outsourced IT department but they tend to be on the expensive side and don't typically provide the same customer service you would get from an inhouse employee. At the end of the day, the question is what is the goal for the MSP option and who is driving the decision.

Secure Facilities Information Technology Manager in Manufacturing2 years ago

Our experience with our MSP has been a long standing relationship that has been advantageous to our needs. We evaluate the performance annually and find that partnering with an MSP is easier than supporting those needs from within.

Please join or sign in to view more content.

By joining the Peer Community, you'll get:

Peer Discussions and Polls
One-Minute Insights
Connect with like-minded individuals

Director of IT in Education2 years ago

It seems as if managed service providers come and go. This reality makes stability and confidence in a sustainable solution, tricky. Our experience has been fairly limited, while mixed.

Director of IT in Software2 years ago

In general, my experience with MSP’s has been very positive, but I have found at times their level of service degrades after the initial 6-months of the commitment. I have found that they initially have been very responsive to our needs and requests because they want to establish a good connection. For the large established MSP’s, I have found the level of service over time remains fairly consistent; however, with smaller MSP’s that are growing faster than they can truly handle, the level of service degrades as resources shift between accounts.