What Does a Great MSP Look Like? 8 Questions to Ask
It can be challenging for in-house IT teams to relinquish the reins of daily operations to a third-party provider. And for good reason! Infrastructure visibility and reliability are critical functions, and the outsourcing decision comes down to one feeling: trust. When you evaluate MSPs, you need to ask questions that give insight into their ability to reliably and consistently deliver results.
Here are 8 must-ask questions for prospective managed services providers.
1. Is the MSP a certified business partner (or authorized reseller) for the leading software and hardware companies?
The best MSPs build relationships with market-leading hardware and software vendors: manufacturers like Palo Alto Networks, Citrix, Cisco, VMware, and Microsoft. You benefit from these relationships by gaining access to the latest expertise, best practices, upgrades and new solutions from market leaders. Will you expect them to resell hardware and software to you for occasional upgrades? If so, make sure their partnership status levels will give you the pricing or discounting you expect.
You also want to validate their certifications on an individual level. Rather than investing in hiring a new employee, you are expecting to gain aggregate new skill sets through your MSP partner’s resources. The provider should be able to demonstrate this expertise. Don’t shy away from asking for a list of their vendor partnership levels and associated employee certifications. They should have team members certified in key security, collaboration, and infrastructure technologies.
Top Certification Levels for Common Infrastructure Partners
Not sure what certification levels you should look for in an MSP? We’ve listed some of the most prevalent infrastructure and cloud technology providers below, with our recommendations. These certification achievements will generally indicate a strong competency for supporting the respective technologies.
| Partner | Preferred Certification Level |
|---|---|
|
Arista |
Arista's partner program comprises three levels: Authorized, Elite, and ElitePlus. If your infrastructure includes Arista, look for an Elite-certified partner. |
|
Aruba |
Look for an Aruba partner with the Aruba Managed Service Provider designation. |
|
Cisco |
Make sure your MSP is Gold Partner Certified, Cisco's highest general certification. Cisco awards specialized certifications to partners who excel in specific areas: for example, Burwood is a Certified Cloud Managed Services Partner. Ask your MSP for theirs. |
|
Citrix |
At minimum, your MSP should have the Citrix Service Provider (CSP) designation. If you think additional Citrix subject matter expertise will be helpful, find a partner in the Solution Advisor program: Gold or Platinum level. |
|
Dell |
Identify a partner with the Dell Technologies Cloud Service Provider qualification, part of their Cloud Service Provider program. |
|
|
Google Cloud's partner program includes Partners and Premier Partners. Either level may be sufficient; ask your MSP candidate some leading situational questions to discern their skillset. |
|
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) |
HPE's partner program includes four tiers: Business, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Burwood recommends selecting a Gold-level MSP. |
|
Juniper Networks |
If you have Juniper infrastructure, your MSP should have their Support Services Specialization: A sign that they've integrated Juniper technology into their monitoring and support offerings. |
|
Microsoft |
Look for a Microsoft partner with Silver or Gold level program authorization. |
|
Palo Alto Networks |
Your Palo Alto Networks infrastructure needs an MSP with their Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) designation. |
|
VMware |
VMware's Partner Connect program includes Partner, Advanced, and Principal tiers. To offer VMware managed services, partners must achieve the Principal tier award. |
2. Do they use ITIL best practices?
Your MSP should have processes based on Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices. ITIL is the industry standard framework for ensuring consistent and effective practices to align IT with business goals.
Making sure your MSP is ITIL-certified is not simply a box-checking exercise. This certification is a good indicator that they’ve dedicated time to building strong processes for their services and they way you’ll interact with their team. In the long run, this influence should improve your own internal documentation, vernacular, and process improvement mindset.
3. Do they have an enterprise-class Network Operations Center (NOC)?
Many MSPs claim to have an enterprise-class Network Operations Center, but few actually do. An enterprise-class NOC will be based on best-in-class IT management tools such as ServiceNow and ScienceLogic. An enterprise-class NOC enables fast response to any event that may affect quality, capacity, or availability in your IT environment. Further, an MSP's NOC is a 24x7 organization that can respond in real time, with real people familiar with your environment to any event occurring within your infrastructure. This ensures maximum availability of your infrastructure and services to your staff.
4. Can they help your team become more data-driven?
A great MSP will use best-in-class monitoring tools like Citrix Director and Performance Analytics.
IT systems generate significant data, but data is useful only when it can be aggregated and transformed into actionable insights. If your MSP uses best-in-class monitoring and infrastructure management tools, you will be able to tap into trending data to help you prepare for future system upgrades with minimal disruption and maximum value. And they’ll offer an interactive, data-rich management portal that makes it easy to see everything from performance metrics and ticket creation to customized reports.
5. Will their services help you plan for the future?
When you look at their service catalog and service tiers, think beyond your current requirements. Onboarding a new vendor relationship is a learning curve for all parties involved, and you don’t want to do it again sooner than you have to! Over time, your MSP will develop a deep understanding of your people, technology, and processes. Your goal should be to create a mutually beneficial business relationship.
Managed Services and Scalability
As your business grows, so will the demand for IT resources. Having a managed services provider on contract can help you scale to accommodate new requests, or scale down when resources are no longer needed. This added layer of monitoring and management also gives you enhanced visibility to watch your resourcing trends and predict growth patterns.
Select an MSP with the maturity or growth potential to support your business as you grow. For example: today you may need management help with your on-premises systems, but what is your cloud strategy? Can the MSP help with cloud management for your expanding application and workload footprint?
6. Are their services one-size-fits-all, or tailored for your needs?
Your MSP should be able to provide tiered services. For example, a basic service might include monitoring, case tracking, and remote troubleshooting, while a more comprehensive service could offer high-level traffic pattern review, patch management, and trend reports. Your partner should be able to customize tools to provide you with a holistic view of your environment. So they need to invest in upkeep, upgrades, and adding new features.
7. What can you expect in terms of response times?
First: ask yourself what you want. 24x7 monitoring is a good baseline. What other service levels are critical to your business? Response time is an important topic here. What do you expect from a good partner? Do you have goals or corporate expectations from downtime and uptime? Ask your candidate to provide their standard SLAs, and make sure they meet your requirements.
8. What kind of reporting do they provide?
Your MSP should be able to provide daily and monthly reports, including documentation of all major incidents of the past 24 hours. Robust reporting allows you to prioritize infrastructure improvements and address root causes. Also, your MSP should be able to provide an easy-to-use, secure, Web-based portal that shows all system activity.
Beyond Management: Leveraging New Advancements in Technology
Your IT team should work smarter, not harder. Managed services can help.
From server builds to exhaustive maintenance: managing the daily needs of an IT infrastructure environment is hard work. But is it smart work?
If you're looking for a qualified provider to help evaluate your current-state or provide perspective on tooling, Burwood Group may be able to help. Get in touch with our team.
Today’s IT and business leaders should expect more from their technology vendors than reactive support; they should require true competency and expertise in their domains. Your infrastructure partners should guide you towards new advancements in cloud, security, collaboration, and other technologies. And the best MSPs will be able to do both: proactive monitoring of your daily operations, while freeing your in-house team to provide vision and help advance the business.
