A managed service provider (MSP) is an organization that manages a company’s IT infrastructure and user systems from a remote location. An MSP is a network administrator, security consultant and disaster recovery expert rolled into one. These professionals handle information services, business-to-business integration, supply chain management, and all the tasks clients don’t want to carry out themselves.
MSP Providers Explained
MSPs streamline a range of business services for clients in various industries, from healthcare to retail. These services include payroll management, human resources, systems operations, compliance and network monitoring. In a recent study, 77 percent of MSPs provided backup and disaster recovery — the most popular service offered by these professionals. Seventy-six percent specialized in remote monitoring and management, and 57 percent provided managed network security. Other popular MSP services include mobile device management, payment processing, and hosted and cloud video surveillance.
MSPs serve an important function. They execute functions that organizations don’t have the time — or the resources — to complete themselves. Fifty-six percent of companies with 100 or more employees who used managed IT services said they chose an MSP to improve the efficiency and reliability of their IT operations. Moreover, 38 percent of companies said enhanced security and compliance was a motivating factor for choosing an MSP. As more organizations worry about IT security — 60 percent of small brands go out of business within six months of a cyber attack, according to one study — it makes sense to choose an MSP that has experience and knowledge in this field.
MSPs date back to the 1990s. Back then, they were called Application Service Providers (ASPs) — companies that hosted and maintained applications for other businesses. Today, MSPs are used by more people than ever before. Research suggests that global managed IT services spending will reach $193 billion by 2019 — double the amount organizations spent on these services in 2014.
How an IT Managed Services Provider Works
Most MSPs operate on a subscription-based model. Clients pay monthly or annual fees for services, and costs vary depending on the MSP. One study suggests that MSPs in the United States charge clients $65 per desktop, on average, for IT support and maintenance. After agreeing on costs, the MSP and the client will come up with a service-level agreement (SLA) — a contract that defines the roles and the responsibilities of each party. The SLA will stipulate factors like performance benchmarks, availability, and uptime.
There are lots of customization options, too. Typically, clients just pay for the services they require — procurement or employee management, for example — instead of expensive packages that include services they don’t need. Communication between the MSP and the client is critical, however. “To fully take advantage of the available managed services options, an IT department must become adept at managing relationships, not only with external providers but also with internal users, who are increasingly being seen as customers,” says Danny Bradbury from CenturyLink, writing for Forbes magazine.
The Benefits of an MSP Managed Service Provider
MSP IT providers optimize various business processes. Clients relinquish control of their operations, but MSPs take care of all the time-consuming and repetitive tasks. This provides clients with more time to focus on other business-related duties. Outsourcing IT services to a third party suits organizations that have a small team of staff or want to drive business growth. They can reduce labor costs by delegating IT services to an MSP, for example.
MSPs save clients money, too. These professionals search for ways to cut spending and improve cost management. Forty-six percent of managed IT service users have reduced IT costs by 25 percent or more; 50 percent have reduced IT costs by between one and 24 percent.
Network security is one of the most popular managed services. MSPs upgrade IT services, manage IT infrastructure and ensure systems aren’t compromised by malicious parties. They often have specialist IT skills, providing the client with peace of mind.
Also, MSPs are familiar with federal and state legislation and PCI compliance standards. This reduces the likelihood of clients receiving hefty fines for non-compliance.
What are Cloud Managed Service Providers?
Cloud managed service providers are a type of MSP that deliver managed IT services via the cloud. These companies centralize network services and applications from a single data center, allowing users to access data quickly. Other benefits include data recovery: Cloud managed service providers store data in the cloud, so users have access to files after a natural disaster or another emergency. More than half of all MSPs now offer cloud managed services to clients.
Businesses are under pressure to provide customers with high-quality IT services. Thirty-six percent of brands want to deliver IT services faster, and 16 percent hope to increase the quality of IT services. Managed IT service providers offer a solution. Clients can deploy services these professionals to better manage their everyday business operations.
Managed Solution offers support services to organizations with dedicated IT consulting and managed services – helping improve productivity, setting predictable controlled costs and reducing the impact of infrastructure challenges on daily operations.
Optimize your existing resources and put more focus on Strategic IT projects while we provide quality support through our award winning US-based Help Desk located in Southern California
Our Managed Services Portfolio includes offerings that cover a wide range of technology’s – choose from one of our packaged offerings or pick and choose the specific services and applications that fit your business needs. The first step will be a Network Assessment with one of our infrastructure experts that will provide you a network inventory analysis, identify any and all network issues and correlate data collected to provide you extensive insight into your network and its performance.
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Create and manage up to 30,000 projects in Project Online
The Microsoft Project team is continuously innovating to meet our customers’ most-pressing needs. That’s why we’ve released additional features during the past six months—and why we’re now excited to announce a huge increase in the number of projects you can support through Project Online, a Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) solution.
Create more projects, get more done
In the past, Project Online only allowed for 5,000 projects. Today, that increases six-fold, enabling you to create and manage up to 30,000 projects in the cloud. You’ve been asking for greater scale through Project Online, and we believe 30,000 projects gives you ample space and flexibility to get more done without resorting to cumbersome workarounds.
We’re also excited to announce several updates that improve performance and help you get the project information you need faster. One of these updates is the ability to create more project sites—also called subsites or collaboration sites. Before, there was a limit of 2,000 project sites. If you wanted more, you had to split them into multiple Project Web App (PWA) sites, impacting team productivity. Now, there’s a one-to-one relationship between projects and project sites. For example, if your Operations department creates 4,000 projects, it can also create 4,000 project sites across multiple site collections, boosting collaboration and information-sharing among project teams. Additionally, you can set the destination of these project sites in the Enterprise Project Type (EPT) template to help streamline project creation.
Access the Project Center data faster
More projects also means more data. Every time you go to the Project Center, Project Online calculates aggregate information—like total cost of all projects—which slows the time it takes to pull up that page. Going forward, you have the option to disable rollup groups and Gantt charts, bringing you the project data you need faster—especially as you create more and more projects. We also expedited the process for displaying a list of projects within Project Center and improved the custom filtering feature to help you quickly find the right project data.
We also released OData performance enhancements to decrease the transmission time for retrieving data from project reports. This is particularly helpful if you use SQL Server Integration Services to transfer data from Project Online into your own warehouse. You can download all your data at once, then pull the changed records at regular intervals to keep project data updated.
Lastly, we added modify dates to the following entities:
AssignmentBaseline
AssignmentBaselineTimephasedData
AssignmentTimephasedData
Engagement
EngagementsTimephasedData
ProjectBaseline
TaskBaseline
TaskBaselineTimephasedData
TaskTimephasedData
TimesheetLineActualData
ResourceDemandTimephasedData
ResourceTimephasedData
The Project team is always innovating to help customers achieve better project outcomes. Please go to our UserVoice page to submit ideas for improving Project. You can also visit the Microsoft PPM website to learn more about Project Online and other PPM offerings.
How male allies can support women in technology
By Jennifer Manry and Mike Wisler as written on techcrunch.com
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing couldn’t be more aptly named: It truly is a celebration of the technical innovation, inclusive focus and relentless drive of women in tech.
We were thrilled to be a small part of the celebration this fall, along with 15,000 other women technologists and male allies. You’ve hopefully heard a lot about the movement around women in tech, raising awareness about the challenges that women face in the tech industry and the importance of hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. A part of that dialogue is about gender allies — the concept that men need to be a part of the solution to reach gender parity in technology fields.
There are so many reasons that men should get involved and be true allies to women in tech: It’s the right thing to do. It’s good for business. Diverse teams that reflect the end user create better results for customers. Male allies respect and appreciate their female teammates. They believe in equality.
According to a study conducted by the National Center for Women & Information Technology, gender diversity benefits businesses in several ways, including better financial performance and superior team dynamics and productivity in gender-balanced companies. Studies report that gender-diverse technology organizations and departments produce work teams that stay on schedule and under budget and demonstrate improved employee performance.
So, how do men become allies and be part of the solution that will so obviously make us as an industry and a society more successful? For starters, it’s not a label that you can self-appoint. The title “ally” is earned. Being an ally is an action, not a noun. If you’re on the sideline thinking about how sensitive and aware you are, you’re not an ally. You have to take action, and drive impact.
And really, you’re not a male ally until women in tech identify you as one.
It was just over a year ago that we learned this lesson together. We attended a conference where women and men delved into the issues that women in tech face, how men impact them and what change really looks like. It involved uncomfortable conversation, awkward moments and even some jaw-dropping confessions.
The crucial component was honesty in a safe space where everyone assumed positive intent. We talk a lot about positive intent at the office because it’s one of our core values. If you start with assuming whomever you’re talking to is coming from a place of positivity, everyone involved benefits from seeing multiple sides of an issue and not jumping to conclusions.
That was when we decided to become part of the solution together.
Armed with the tools and tactics we learned, we started a Women in Tech Male Allies initiative with the goal of raising awareness about the challenges women face, identifying ways men can be a part of the solution, providing education about unconscious bias and training men and women to call out and work through bias issues. We both learned more about the issues and how we could take this newly formed partnership back to our teams to amplify the dialogue.
The partnership element is crucial: Having a woman in tech and a man who is actively working to be a better ally meant we were able to show — rather than just say — how having a trusted partner is invaluable to the process and to making progress.
Being a gender ally isn’t easy. In fact, we can guarantee that you’ll make mistakes just like we did. The thing to remember is that we’re all human. We will inevitably make mistakes. But, if you have a partnership and a trust that grants permission to be imperfect, those mistakes become learning opportunities and teachable moments.
And to be clear, it’s not just the male allies who will fall short from time to time. Women in tech have a lifetime of experiences of receiving bias that may have been unconscious or outright explicit. Extraordinarily valid feelings stemming from that can be a barrier to accepting help or support from men who genuinely do want to help. Both sides have ample opportunities to misstep. Just like in tech, the “fail fast” mentality works. Do everything you can to get it right, but when you don’t, learn from it and make the next time better.
Through our work at Capital One, we’ve found that men can help by serving as allies and contributing to a culture of inclusion. They don’t do this by charging in to save the day; instead, male allies play a supportive role in addressing the challenges that women face in the tech industry. Women in tech can invite men into the conversation and be a trusted partner to start and continue the dialogue. Gender parity isn’t going to be achieved by a single group. We’ll get there faster together.
This award is given on a monthly basis to a Managed Solution employee who has done an amazing job of exemplifying and living up to the Managed Solution Core Values.
The Managed Solution leadership team selected Alicia Moshtagh as Player of the Month because she has recently taken over the MOC Manager role and is championing process and continuous improvements throughout the department. Alicia has worked for Managed Solution for over five years and is an amazing liaison across departments, truly voicing customer requests and concerns so each department can respond accordingly. Alicia works with her team to provide the highest level of service while assuring our customers are in great hands. Her general attitude in the workplace is also praised by all, especially our marketing team, who works directly with Alicia to send out customer security alerts and keep them updated on end user tips and tricks.
Alicia's passion for technology and ensured customer satisfaction is contagious. She's inspiring to her colleagues and customers praise her personality and patience. Therefore, leadership is excited to award her dedication and hard work with this month’s Player of the Month.
At Managed Solution, we strive to be the best technology based company by investing in our top assets; our people!
Here at Managed Solution we thrive in an energetic, performance-driven environment where results, teamwork, and quality of customer satisfaction are recognized and rewarded. Our corporate culture is diverse, open and creative. We look for team members with proven experience, a strong sense of passion and dedication to the highest levels of excellence, technology and business ethics.
As written on blogs.office.com
If you ever travel for business or work remotely, like 23 percent of U.S. employees do, you rely on communication tools to stay in touch with your partners and clients whether you’re inside or outside the office. You need the most up-to-date technology to ensure your work isn’t limited by location or circumstance, but what should you look for in your communication tools?
Here’s our list of five non-negotiable features:
You’re easy to get ahold of—Want to make it easier for people to connect with you no matter where you are? Use your email signature to let others contact you directly, be it cellphone, a remote office number or an online number. With Office 365, you can make your Outlook signature phone number link directly to your Skype for Business address. Your information will be linked automatically, so others can instantly communicate with you in real-time. Read this TechNet article to find out how to create a TEL:// or SIP:// link in your signature.
Take calls from the device that is easiest for you—While constantly on the go, collaboration isn’t limited to your office. You may need to start a call or presentation in your office before transferring to your cellphone to wrap it up on the road. Skype for Business allows you to do so without disrupting your workflow. If you’re on a call or presenting from your computer but have to leave the office, Skype for Business enables you to seamlessly transition your conversation across devices. You can either change the device connected to the PC or transfer to mobile.
Run presentations and share your applications with ease—Running a meeting with remote participants can be tricky, especially when you’re giving a presentation. You shouldn’t have to compromise a quality voice connection for a simple screen share—nor should you feel the need to run a meeting across multiple platforms. Skype for Business makes the process as simple as possible by letting you share PowerPoint slide shows directly in a meeting. No need to worry about sharing files and emailing links, you can just focus on your presentation.
Record meetings—Not sure about some of those key points that were mentioned during your call? Or was a colleague or partner not present? Multimedia recording features should always be included with business-class communication tools. With Office and Skype for Business, you can record and replay presentations and video, so any of those details that might have been missed are always a click away.
Communicate with those outside your organization—It’s unlikely everyone you talk to outside your company will use the same communication tools as you, so it’s important to look for a tool that offers ease of use for guests. Fortunately, connecting with non-Skype for Business users is not a problem. Accessing the conference or meeting as a guest is simple, and the security and robust features the host relies on remain standard.
Several barriers to communication and collaboration can arise when you’re working outside the office. Fortunately, Skype for Business can help. It’s more than just a video chat option; it has the features to keep you connected and make work as accessible as possible.
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Congratulations to Shaun Fagan, Project Manager, for being selected as Managed Solution’s January 2016 Player of the Month.
This award is given on a monthly basis to a Managed Solution employee who has done an amazing job of exemplifying and living up to the Managed Solution Core Values.
The Managed Solution leadership team selected Shaun Fagan as Player of the Month because he has shown great communication between teams. Shaun consistently proves to be a great team player at work, and he also proves to handle difficult clients with ease. Shaun, who has been with Managed Solution for over three years now, also works hard outside of the office to further his education.
Shaun is originally from Costa Mesa and now lives in Lake Elsinore. He has one son who is 24 years old that he spends a lot of time with, as shown above at Snow Summit. In his free time, he enjoys snowboarding, biking, hiking, playing the guitar, shooting, traveling, and spending time with his family.
Shaun’s hard work ethic, extraordinary communication skills, and outstanding client service prove he deserves to be recognized as this month’s Player of the Month.
Managed Solution recognizes outstanding employees (players) by awarding them Player of the Month. This award is given on a monthly basis to a Managed Solution player who has knocked the socks off of one of our members of leadership by living up to the Managed Solution Core Values on a daily basis. Our values are important. They’re the foundation behind all we do. Players of the Month are recognized and highlighted on the Wall of Fame and rewarded with an extra day of PTO to use on a day of their choice.
Congratulations to all of our Players of the Month:
December - Steve Malott, Technical Account Manager
November - Kate Frasure, Customer Development Manager
Here at Managed Solution we thrive in an energetic, performance-driven environment where results, teamwork, and quality of customer satisfaction are recognized and rewarded. Our corporate culture is diverse, open and creative. We look for team members with proven experience, a strong sense of passion and dedication to the highest levels of excellence, technology and business ethics.
At Managed Solution, we strive to be the best technology based company by investing in our top assets; our people - CAREERS
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Managed Solution recognizes outstanding employees (players) by awarding them Player of the Month. This award is given on a monthly basis to a Managed Solution player who has knocked the socks off of one of our members of leadership by living up to the Managed Solution Core Values on a daily basis. Our values are important. They’re the foundation behind all we do. Players of the Month are recognized and highlighted on the Wall of Fame and rewarded with an extra day of PTO to use on a day of their choice.
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