MSP: Implement digital processes and increase IT security
December 17, 2021
In eigener Sache
When companies need IT services, they can turn to a managed service provider (MSP). This specialises in the secure and reliable provision of IT services. Thanks to the MSP's services, companies are able to digitalise and optimise business processes, increase cyber security and achieve other individual goals (e.g. gain time to exercise their own core competencies).
In the following, we will go into detail about what is meant by an MSP and what services they provide. We then present the advantages and disadvantages of working with MSPs. For the disadvantages, we suggest solutions before concluding with our offer as an MSP.
Managed Service Provider - Definition
An MSP sells IT services to customers. A company that depends on server maintenance, for example, is a customer and books this service with the MSP. This saves the company the work of training its own staff in server maintenance or hiring an expert to do the job. Instead, it falls back on the resources of a provider who offers server maintenance and is well-versed in this area of expertise.
In addition to server maintenance, MSPs now offer several IT services that can be booked in service packages or individually as single services.
Excerpt from the service portfolio
- Hosting services: A digital infrastructure is provided and managed, with which customers can operate a website or an online shop, for example. Hosting services are classified as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
- Virtual Private Network (VPN): With the help of the MSP, this network enables the establishment of a connection that is not visible to people outside the network and thus meets high standards of security and privacy.
- Internet Protocol Telephony (IP Telephony): This technology can replace conventional telephone technology and is used for telephony via computer networks that are built according to Internet standards.
- Cybersecurity: The cybersecurity services of an MSP serve to develop and use customised IT security concepts for companies.
- Software updates: If updates are carried out by the MSP, it is more likely that software errors will not occur following the update or that they will be remedied quickly after notification to the service provider.
The most common MSPs today are those that communicate with their clients via networks and only offer services that can be performed remotely. There are exceptions: There are MSPs on the market that offer on-site services at customers' premises, such as hardware repair.
Managed Service Provider: Meaning increasingly broadly defined
In recent years there has been a tendency to define the term MSP increasingly broadly. While MSP is traditionally understood to mean a provider of services from the information technology sector, nowadays more and more services from other sectors and areas are being offered under this term. These include, among others, facility services, training and personnel services.
Example 1: The content of a Artikels im Handelsblatt from June 2020 is a managed service provider for temporary employment. The provider organises the contact to suitable temporary employment agencies and personnel service providers for companies that book its services. It also takes over the administration. According to the Handelsblatt, the managed service provider is also a support for existing contacts with temporary employment agencies and personnel service providers because it can simplify the cooperation after an examination and evaluation of the processes.
Example 2: There is a separate technical term for the managed service providers who offer to carry out staff training at companies: Managed Training Services (MTS). These providers create a learning ecosystem for companies, which may include the provision of specialist staff to deliver staff training. It is also possible for MTS providers to optimise companies' existing training concepts by digitising the learning offer.
Interim conclusion: What is MSP?
An MSP is a service provider that sells services to clients in a wide range of industries and sectors. Although the offerings of MSPs are expanding to include more and more services, in most cases the term is understood to mean the offering of IT services.
The majority of MSPs offer remote IT services, including business security solutions, hosting services, VPN setup and management, and updates. Some MSPs also offer on-site services, such as repairing hardware and providing IT staff at the company's base.
The benefit question: How can an MSP service provider help?
An MSP service provider helps companies to make cost structures and human resources more transparent. Assuming that a company itself hires new temporary staff at regular intervals or freelancers from time to time, the company must also have a permanent overview of the staff and the associated requirements to be met:
- Costs (including fees, salaries, social security contributions)
- Compliance with legal requirements
- Ensuring the safety of each employed or freelance person
- Communication with temporary staff
The fact that companies specifically assign staff in their personnel departments to meet these requirements, as is the case with a personnel manager, for example, is not necessarily the ideal solution. On the one hand, a personnel manager does not have the extensive contacts to temporary staff and companies to find the adequate personnel with a high degree of certainty. On the other hand, the HR manager does not have the experience of MSPs in the management of staff and their administration.
With the MSP, things are different: first of all, the MSP provides the necessary transparency in human resources management. In doing so, the provider does not accept certain costs without questioning them, but sets itself the goal of optimising human resources management and the associated costs and other aspects. Due to its experience and specialisation, the service provider is able to choose from a large pool of temporary staff and companies to find the most suitable personnel for the client company. Alternatively, the service provider provides the staff itself - this is an MSP provider with a master vendor concept that has its own staff to manage all the services offered.
Since some companies have no digitalised processes or too few of them, an MSP provider is also a contact point for starting the digital transformation. Basic steps such as setting up and hosting a web presence, introducing digital communication channels and ensuring IT security can be done by an MSP provider.
As an extension to these services, MSP providers are able to observe the company's processes remotely and/or on-site in order to identify opportunities to optimise them and make improvements. An example of such process optimisation:
- The MSP provider checks and evaluates an existing online shop.
- In the process, the provider identifies deficits in the processing of orders as well as customer management.
- To make both clearer, the provider sets up an enterprise resource planning system (ERP) and a customer relationship management system (CRM).
- To further optimise and automate the operating processes, the MSP provider programmes interfaces between the online shop and other systems.
- The provider also takes care of the hosting and updates of the online shop and the associated systems.
Processes like these illustrate how the increasing digitalisation and consequent optimisation of business processes can be carried out by an MSP provider. With regard to communication with customers, cybersecurity, supplier management and various other areas of work in companies, there are perspectives like these. The more processes are in one hand, the more smoothly and consistently an MSP provider can work and create synergies between individual company departments in order to extend advantages to the entire company.
What are the disadvantages and challenges associated with hiring an MSP provider?
One disadvantage associated with using IT services is the loss of control. Due to the fact that certain tasks or processes are delegated, the company automatically relinquishes control. Some examples of conceivable losses of control are the following:
- Creation and release of user accounts to the MSP, who thereby gains access to certain system components.
- Insight into company internals for personnel of the MSP
- Access by the MSP to systems belonging to the company's clients
- Granting powers that enable the MSP to communicate on behalf of the company to a certain extent
These potential powers granted to an MSP by the contracting company represent a loss of control. Now the question is not only whether to trust the provider as a whole, but also whether to trust any employee of the MSP who could theoretically abuse the trust in a variety of ways behind the provider's back without the provider's knowledge: Disclosure of company internals and poaching of customers are just some of the examples of possible breaches of trust.
In addition to the disadvantage of losing control, by using an MSP, companies miss out on the opportunity to do the work themselves and thereby learn. The more and more precisely a company knows about its own processes, the better it can use this know-how for its own purposes. Own know-how in all business segments has the advantage of comprehensive competence, which can be used profitably in customer discussions under certain circumstances.
Finally, the disadvantage of the costs incurred should be mentioned: The amount of the costs depends on the respective provider and the scope of services booked with him, whereby different billing models - mostly monthly fees, hourly fees or flat rates - are offered. Whether the costs incurred are a disadvantage is, however, doubtful in most cases, as companies gain time by delegating certain tasks and processes. At the same time, an MSP's experience usually enables him to carry out his work in a high-quality and speedy manner. As a result, despite the additional costs for the MSP, companies still post higher profits in their final accounts, because they can usually invest the working time gained in the core business, in which they are most experienced anyway. The expansion of the core business usually increases the company's profit faster than the additional costs of the MSP's work reduce it.
Suggested solutions to challenges associated with engaging MSPs
The biggest challenge that arises from engaging an MSP service provider is minimising the loss of control that comes from mandatorily granting access rights to the service provider. This challenge becomes greater for companies using, for example, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or IaaS, as in both cases the data centres are no longer within the company's control.
Time-limited access is one solution to this challenge. To achieve this, MSP protocols are agreed and fulfilled, as is the case with Zero-Trust-Sicherheitsstrategie, for example. Furthermore, it is helpful to define individual accounts in order to be able to check to which account which activities are to be assigned. If, on the other hand, MSP service providers use shared accounts - especially if the accounts of company employees are used - it would hardly be possible to assign activities to the person performing them. Companies are well advised to communicate the extent to which access-restricting measures and individual accounts with strict assignment of tasks are in use before commissioning an MSP.
Another challenge in working with MSP providers that was mentioned earlier is to let the MSP provider do its job, but still understand what it is doing in order to expand one's own know-how and to be able to use the knowledge gained for business purposes if necessary.
At this point, it proves helpful to demand close monitoring from MSP service providers about the measures taken and their benefits. The more value a company's executives place on close communication with MSP service providers, the more know-how they will acquire in the course of the MSP's work. Another useful means of passing on know-how throughout the company is to organise training on the relevant topics; this is where the MTS offerings that some MSPs provide in addition to IT services come into play.
Using ENBITCON as an example: Managed Service Provider for Cloud, Secure Mail Gateway, Backups and other services
We at ENBITCON operate as a Managed Service Provider. As such, we provide you with several IT services for the digitalisation and optimisation of your work processes. A major focus of our Managed IT Services is security. Since not only security applications are evolving, but also cyber criminals, some of whom use artificial intelligence (AI) to hack into networks, standardised anti-virus programmes hardly guarantee an adequate level of security any more.
ENBITCON therefore offers companies customised solutions for their ecosystem. With the Managed Firewall, the Managed FortiAnalyzer and the Secure Mail Gateway, comprehensive security measures adapted to the company are taken. By means of IT vulnerability scanning, ENBITCON is able to prevent attacks and thus display the desirable forward-looking action of an MSP.
Other offers, such as Veeam Cloud Connect, provide a scalable and redundant digital infrastructure as a solid basis for business activities and the presence of companies on the Internet.
Conclusion and outlook
With an MSP at their side, most companies succeed in digitising their business processes faster and better than they would on their own. In addition, by delegating the work, companies get the chance to focus on their core competencies.
The service of an MSP is always accompanied by a loss of control. The loss of control is unavoidable through the delegation of certain tasks or business segments, but can be limited through time-limited access and the establishment of individual accounts with clear task allocation. Measures against the loss of control are standard for professional MSP service providers.
Due to the increasing digitalisation in many industries and the growing complexity of applications and their management, it is advantageous for most companies to hire an MSP in the long term. Especially from the point of view of IT security, there seems to be no alternative to working with an MSP.