7 Key Questions to ask a Managed Service Provider

CIOs and IT departments are facing an ever increasing number of pressures – in particular from new technology.

Just think of the challenges facing business today:

BYOD, Mobility, Smart Devices, Cloud, Hosting and Virtualisation, Wireless Networking, SIP Technologies, VoIP, Fully Unified Communications, Flexible Working…

This list only ever seems to be getting longer..

In order to maintain competitive advantage you have to be able to support these new technologies and help your staff work how they want to.

The reality is that this is really hard to do, the pace of change is fast, and constant.

It is this gap that is helping drive the adoption of cloud services and steering organisations towards Managed Service Providers.

This raises its own questions though. And that is exactly what this Blog Post Series will look at answering, helping you understand what to look for.

We understand that CIOs are dealing with shrunken budgets and are often understaffed as their lists of responsibilities runs to almost everything that has a plug attached. So the question you have to ask is whether you want your staff to be firefighters resolving problems, or working towards implementing new business enabling plans?

I thought that may be your answer.

In which case, these posts will help you understand and evaluate your options and hopefully make the decision of which service provider to go for a simpler one.

 

So, how exactly do you pick a Managed Service Provider?

 

Here are the fundamental 7 questions to ask, we will be addressing one a week for the next 2 months here on the Britannic Blog:

1. Will the Managed Service Provider support our strategy now and in the future?
2. Can we trust them to have the necessary expertise and bandwidth to maintain and support our systems as a Managed Service Provider?
3. Will they become trusted advisors that will stay engaged and serve as an extension of our business?
4. Does the portfolio of products and services span everything that we need and have the flexibility to ensure smooth deployment of Managed Services?
5. What applications, diagnostic and analytic tools do they have to help us anticipate problems and solve them where applicable?
6. Do they offer a single point of contact who can quickly gather experts to help you resolve any issues in your networks?
7. Do they know you? Do they understand your needs?

If you think that we are missing something we would like to hear from you?

Have you recently been through this process and have some advice to share?