The rise of MSPs for enterprise networks
Businesses moving away from major carriers to managed service providers (MSPs) to manage their networks. Find out why this trend is likely to increase across every industry.
MSPs: Making your network work for you
Your network is the foundation of your business’ technology – a platform for innovation, agility and growth.
Businesses of all sizes are increasingly making the shift from traditional, on-premises networks with perimeter-based security, towards cloud or hybrid network solutions that offer greater efficiency, flexibility and cost-effectiveness.
The trend of businesses moving away from major carriers to managed service providers (MSPs) to manage their networks is something we see happening much more in 2022. To unpack the topic in detail, we spoke to Ben Richards, the General Manager of Data Centres and Networks at Interactive.
Expert insights:
Ben Richards
General Manager of Data Centres and Networks at Interactive
The process of choosing a network for a business has become a lot more complex in the past few years. The main drivers of this are the advancement in technology and choice around networks. Previously, if you moved to an office in a certain location, you probably didn’t have any options outside traditional carriers to connect to your data centre or your internet or whatever you needed. That’s completely changed now. You still have traditional carriers but you also have nbn, wireless options, dark fiber, smaller carriers and even Elon Musk’s Starlink to name a few.
That variety of choice for businesses is fantastic because every company is unique, so every company has different needs when it comes to their network. However, it does make the decision-making process a little bit harder because you do need quite a bit expertise to figure out which type of solution is best for you. That’s where a managed service provider (MSP) can help.
There are many benefits of engaging a managed service provider for something like enterprise networks and the first one is that they’ll provide independent and unbiased advice to make sure you choose the best solution for your business. A managed service provider can guide you on price, service, technical needs and/or support because this is not a one-size-fits-all type of product. Even within your business, different departments might need different types of networks so you may be dealing with a few different providers. With IT budgets under as much scrutiny as ever, you don’t want to be overspending or not getting the right return on investment.
Another area where a managed service provider can really help is minimising downtime. Instead of having to call a large organisation to fix an issue, you can call an MSP and they can give you an extra layer of support.
However, if the issue needs to be escalated, it can be efficiently. A good MSP will already have excellent relationships with the main carriers in Australia so they can engage the carriers on your behalf and speak to the right people to quickly solve the problem.
The final benefit I’m going to mention is something that your finance team will love. When you’re dealing with multiple carriers and most companies do because you’ll need different types of networks for different areas of your business, it can be a complex purchasing arrangement. You’ll have multiple bills from multiple providers coming in at different times. That’s obviously hard to manage and it’s also hard to know if you’re getting the best deal possible, no matter the network service you’re getting. A managed service provider does all of that for you and all your services come through in one bill.
A key indicator of whether you should engage a managed service provider is if you are feeling like you’re struggling a little bit with the complexity of your network deployments.
You may feel like you’re not getting the best service from a cost or technical perspective. You may also want to kick off a new project and you’re unsure where to start in terms of network requirements. Reach out to an MSP and they’ll help you find the best solution for you. Interactive has been working on networks for over 10 years so we have a lot of experience and we’ve seen our customers benefit from the guidance of our team.
If you do want to start the conversation with an MSP, the key things to bring to the conversation is your location and the bandwidth you need. I know that’s very simple data, but it could result in a myriad of different solution, and an MSP will help you choose the best one for you.
