Managed Services Provider
A managed services provider (MSP) is typically an information technology (IT) services provider that manages and assumes responsibility for providing a defined set of services to their clients either proactively or as they (not the client) determine that the services are needed. Most MSPs bill an upfront setup or Transition and an ongoing flat or near-fixed monthly fee, which benefits their clients by providing them with predictable IT support costs.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) sometimes are contracted to manage multiple staffing vendors and to measure their effectiveness in filling positions according to a customer's standards and requirements. In effect, the MSP serves as a "neutral" party that offers the customer a complete workforce solution while ensuring efficient operation and leveraging multiple staffing companies to obtain competitive rates. MSPs typically use a Vendor Management System (VMS) as a software tool to provide transparency and efficiency — along with detailed metrics to the user — related to every aspect of the contingent and contract workforce. The model has proven its usefulness in the private sector, notably among Fortune 500 companies, and is poised to become more common in the government arena.
MSPs often use specialised software in order to control and deploy managed services to their customers. Examples of such software include Kaseya and Managed Workplace.
Read more about this topic: Managed Services
Famous quotes containing the words managed, services and/or provider:
“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That is the thankless position of the father in the family—the provider for all, and the enemy of all.”
—J. August Strindberg (1849–1912)