Managed services is the practice of outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining, and anticipating need for, a range of processes and functions, ostensibly for the purpose of improved operations and reduced budgetary expenditures through the reduction of directly-employed staff.[1][2][3] It is an alternative to the break/fix or on-demand outsourcing model where the service provider performs on-demand services and bills the customer only for the work done.[4][5]
Under this subscription model, the client or customer is the entity that owns or has direct oversight of the organization or system being managed, whereas the managed services provider (MSP) is the service provider delivering the managed services. The client and the MSP are bound by a contractual, service-level agreement that states the performance and quality metrics of their relationship.
History and evolution
The evolution of MSP started in the 1990s with the emergence of application service providers (ASPs) who helped pave the way for remote support for IT infrastructure. From the initial focus of remote monitoring and management of servers and networks, the scope of an MSP’s services expanded to include mobile device management, managed security, remote firewall administration and security-as-a-service, and managed print services. Around 2005, Karl W. Palachuk, Amy Luby, Founder of Managed Service Provider Services Network acquired by High Street Technology Ventures, and Erick Simpson, founder of Managed Services Provider University, were the first advocates and the pioneers of the managed services business model.[17][18]
The first books on the topic of managed services: Service Agreements for SMB Consultants: A Quick-Start Guide to Managed Services[19] and The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice[20] were published in 2006 by Palachuk and Simpson, respectively. Since then, the managed services business model has gained ground among enterprise-level companies. As the value-added reseller (VAR) community evolved to a higher level of services, it adapted the managed service model and tailored it to SMB companies.
