What to Look For in a Managed Services Provider

The reasons for deciding to engage a managedselect a vendor that has the ability to fully restore
services provider as a strategic business resource foryour systems at anytime under any circumstances in
your business may be obvious; cost savings, security,the event of disaster or data loss; whether caused
reliability, peace of mind - just to name a few. Nowby a security breach, disgruntled employee, virus, or
comes the tricky part, how to decide which managednatural disaster. This level of service should be
services provider is best for your business. In orderprovided through both local and remote backup and
for you to make the best decision possible take intostorage capabilities by the managed services
consideration the following factors when sizing up theprovider, and governed by a robust backup schedule,
vastly competitive world of managed serviceswhose effectiveness should be regularly verified
providers.through regular test restores of data - you can
Costs and Cost Savings: To a certain degree cost isnever be too careful with your critical business and
always one of the key deciding factors in anyclient data.
business decision; and it is certainly a considerationReports: Any qualified managed services provider
when choosing a managed services provider. Whenshould provide at a minimum quarterly status and
factoring how much these services will cost yourservice reports detailing: overall system performance,
business, first ensure that you are comparing applespotential problem areas, and areas of opportunity for
to apples, and consider the cost savings you mayimprovement. This data should provide you with the
realize from increased proactive support which willinformation you need in order to make better
maximize your uptime and productivity; as well as thebusiness decisions regarding your information and
benefits of the ability to budget for your support ontechnology services, with the objective of supporting
a predictable monthly flat-fee subscription basis..your budgeting for technology and infrastructure
Agreement Review: Obtain a detailed agreementimprovements that will continue to reduce your
outlining exactly what services will be provided by thecosts, improve your efficiencies, mitigate business
agreement, and what services are not covered, butpain and reduce risk.
instead billed in addition to the standard flat monthlyCustomer Satisfaction and Referrals: Request a list of
fee. Verify what type of support is included in thereferences from potential providers of a subset of
agreement, and if the support is twenty four hours atheir clients that are in the same or a similar line of
day, seven days a week or if there will be extrabusiness or industry as you are. When contacting
charges for your after-hours or weekend supportthese references, inquire about their overall level of
needs.satisfaction. In addition, inquire specifically about how
Qualified Personnel: Ascertain that potential providerslong it took for the provider to "on-board" them, or
not only have qualified and certified staff in the areasimplement their services, the number and frequency
of expertise that your business requires; but alsoof system failures they may have experienced since
inquire as to what type of programs they have inengaging the provider's services, any resulting
place to keep their personnel up to date on thedowntime from failures and the provider's response
latest IT developments and technologies available.time and overall time to completely resolve the
Maintenance, Monitoring and Security: Verify thatsituation.
services include frequent, periodic hardware andDeciding on a managed services provider for your
software checks for the latest security patches andbusiness can seem like a daunting task simply due to
updates. Services should also include remotethe overwhelming number of choices in the
monitoring of your systems twenty-four hours permarketplace. You can streamline the decision-making
day, seven days a week, allowing the provider theprocess by putting together an outline based on the
ability to identify and address potential problemsmentioned, with sub topics addressing your specific
before they have the opportunity to escalate tobusiness needs. Use a basic system to score
service outages or crisis situations.potential providers in each category (pass/fail, or a
This monitoring needs to encompass the totalscale of one through ten), tally up the total scores
security of your entire infrastructure, including yourfrom each and see if the scores line up with your
firewall, email, anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions.overall "gut instinct" impression.
Backups and Remote Data Storage: Make certain to