What is the state of MSPs today?

February 1, 2024 1:27 PM

My friend is trying to convince me that MSPs are the way of the future. As a former developer who works from home my knowledge of MSPs is limited to the very locked down laptop a corporation gives me to get into whatever very specific thing I need to get done. They are talking about going into offices and servicing printers, laptops and servers. Do people outside of secure government agencies really need this level of on-prem support?

I am exaggerating a bit but any software I would develop would be hardware independent. Kubernetes or similar if needed that backs up to a cloud. The resiliency is built at a layer above the hardware: a pod is a pod more or less if it is in AWS or locally.

Similarly for laptops I roll my eyes as to why they need endpoint management and some of it is theater for sure, but I don’t know why they would need someone to come out and fix printers and laptops. It feels cheaper just to drop ship overnight a new one… if people still go into offices.

I guess I worked at firms with FPGA chips or their own data centers that are gapped from the internet for various reasons but that’s not this. He’s insisting databases and the like are still cheaper than AWS DynamoDb or whatever offering. For mundane tasks like most people are dealing with the resiliency, multi-region, backups, etc. of the cloud seem way better than some guy still doing tape backups over a RAID5 array for a local company.

I’m really skeptical, is there a huge market for this? Or is it going the way of the TV repair man?

posted by geoff. to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

A clarifying question - What is an "MSP"?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:30 PM on February 1, 2024 [10 favorites]

Pretty sure it's Managed Service Provider, but I could be wrong (not my area).

There's a whole reddit on the topic including this similar question from 2022:

https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/sznafs/what_does_the_future_of_the_msp_space_look_like/
posted by tiamat at 1:38 PM on February 1, 2024 [1 favorite]

Malleable Signal Processor?
posted by falsedmitri at 1:39 PM on February 1, 2024

Response by poster: Managed Service Provider… as it was explained to me basically under the umbrella of tech support. They don’t actually develop software or hardware but are first line tech support.
posted by geoff. at 1:40 PM on February 1, 2024

They don’t actually develop software or hardware but are first line tech support.

That's your answer right there. Who can use an MSP? Anyone who needs tech support. I've hired or interviewed MSPs for small businesses, for medium-sized dev agencies, and for tiny startups.

Certainly "Tech Support" has changed over the decades but I think there's an argument that the need for MSPs could increase as work from home becomes more common. If you WFH and have an IT issue you might not be able to ask the person in the cubicle next to you for help.


For mundane tasks like most people are dealing with the resiliency, multi-region, backups, etc. of the cloud seem way better than some guy still doing tape backups over a RAID5 array for a local company.

The MSPs I've worked with do, in fact, operate cloud backups as appropriate. Someone has to manage the cloud backup, even if it's a SaaS platform, so it can either be managed by the individual employee, by someone else at the company (IT Dept, Help Desk, etc), or outsourced to an MSP.

There's also VAR - value-added resellers like CDW, Zones, and the like. There's some overlap with MSP because if you buy a laptop from a VAR, you probably want it set up... and then why not have them monitor it and make sure it's up to date?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 1:57 PM on February 1, 2024

I work for an MSP and I'm happy to answer questions, but to be totally honest I'm not entirely sure what's being asked here. Are you evaluating whether to hire an MSP, or whether you should change careers to start one, or work for one? There are many businesses and nonprofits that have IT needs but can't justify a full-time IT staffer or department, or whose in-house tier-1/tier-2 IT can be supplemented by MSP support for escalations, or who need specialized manpower for large projects like a fleet refresh, SOX compliance, or a network redesign--all of which are roles an MSP can serve for an org.
posted by churl at 2:07 PM on February 1, 2024 [6 favorites]

I also work for a specialist MSP that covers a niche but important technology that our customers don’t have or want in-house skills to cover - and yes, it’s a thing and there’s a market for it.
posted by rd45 at 2:14 PM on February 1, 2024 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Yeah I guess the question is if it is a thing or if I’m describing it incorrectly because it may have evolved? Like my perception of an “IT guy” is someone who helps setup a printer or computer. Thats not a slight, I used to do that. And more to the real question is that he’s asking me to get involved and grow it in a roundabout way. My answer is no as that’s not my area of expertise, but I was curious what IT support means when you can’t be in an office and equipment has reached a point where it just works to a degree.
posted by geoff. at 2:50 PM on February 1, 2024

Response by poster: I should add in my world this falls now under the auspices of “DX” or developer experience. As in any dev should be able to know how to do things but an entire team to help facilitate that is a huge value add.
posted by geoff. at 2:56 PM on February 1, 2024

equipment has reached a point where it just works to a degree

Sort of. First, remember that you’re much more comfortable with technology than many other folks in a business would be, so things you may see as second nature (I have to connect the printer to WiFi, but it doesn’t support 5 ghz, so I have to turn that off to connect, and I can only set the connection up over USB, and it has a USB-A cord but my laptop only has USB-C so I’m gonna need a dock…) are complete gibberish to others and they want the entire lifecycle of the product to be someone else’s problem.

Two - even if the printer works perfectly out of the box for a decade, someone has to pick it. Lots of people don’t want that headache.

Edit: just saw your comment as I posted. As in any dev should be able to know how to do things

If it’s a helpful reminder, keep in mind that yes a DX team might not benefit from an MSP…. But most companies don’t have developers at all, never mind a support team for those developers.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:59 PM on February 1, 2024 [4 favorites]

Pretty sure MSPs have evolved well beyond laptop/desktop support, though yeah, that's still a thing they do. They can also replace on-prem or data-center-housed servers -- which may not sound like All That, but for specialized software it can matter -- with their associated sysadmins. A lot of infosec compliance and whatnot is also outsourced to MSPs.
posted by humbug at 3:50 PM on February 1, 2024

I use one MSP as a corporate customer and am on-boarding an MSP team for something. I sometimes get my laptop serviced (big places seem to have a tech bar set up where you can go and drop off your machine or get tech stuff done on the spot like pick up an encrypted drive or have something configured that requires root access - VIPs get the tech people going to them) but most of my interaction is by raising a ticket and it’s handled remotely. Behind the scenes it’s managing the contract over what technical support they’ll provide and getting them a run book and going through all the processes and SOPs. It’s maintenance, not development.

I will say customer service makes a huge difference on the ground. I don’t get to choose either of these vendors but there are three staff who I go out of my way to help and ask help because they are so pleasant to work with.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:52 PM on February 1, 2024 [1 favorite]

Don’t go into business trying to undercut DynamoDb on price. That is crazy talk.

There is an extremely small number of organizations running compute workloads that would benefit from running their own hardware for financial reasons. These companies hire people that are skilled at remote monitoring and deployment. They would hire a MSP to physically touch machines. I don’t see the benefit in building software for these people.

Most other organizations will spend more in licensing + labour to run their own infrastructure than to just buy AWS in the first place. Big tech companies are working out how to move governments, financial services, health care, and other security sensitive sectors to the cloud. Once the big company software is ready (and in some cases it already is), you’re out of business.

There is lots of room in the MSP space to physically touch machines and call users on Zoom. This doesn’t seem to be the space you want to play in. If you want a more durable career, write software that helps people minimize and optimize their cloud spend.
posted by shock muppet at 4:12 PM on February 1, 2024

Somebody has to install and troubleshoot the very many special purpose software packages. Printers are often possessed by demonic forces and must be beaten into submission. People will do peculiar things to break laptops (use as a candleholder, drop from various heights, use while snorting powdery stuff, get cruft in keyboards). I had 2 laptop keyboards die last summer due to high humidity. RAM need to be upgraded, somebody needs to make an artpad work with their machine. There's a ton of tasks computers, networks and peripherals generate. I worked at helpdesks, including managing a support dept., and sometimes things don't work right for extremely odd reasons, and sometimes the reasons aren't just humans being clumsy. So, yes, there is a need for MSPs, but tech support seems to be paying less and moving offshore, if that hasn't all been done by now.

Your question sounds like you're considering doing this work, but actually I think you're just curious. Clarification?
posted by theora55 at 7:58 PM on February 1, 2024

It's hard to tell if you're asking
a) why do companies need an IT team/tech support?
or
b) why would a company pay a 3rd party to do that?

But either way, the answer is that technical things need maintaining (troubleshooting, fixing, updating, replacing) and as others have mentioned above not every company has the resources or desire to handle that in-house.

my perception of an “IT guy” is someone who helps setup a printer or computer

Then, politely, your perception is about 20 years out of date. That's like saying a mechanic is the person who changes your oil. Sure, they do that but it's one of the most basic tasks and the intern who's been there a month straight out of school will be able to do that. (Also there are plenty of women working in IT now. Not enough, admittedly, but I haven't worked in an all male IT team for at least a decade so "IT guy" as a default is also out of date).

It seems (again, politely and I mean no offence) that you are fairly ignorant of the level of knowledge and expertise it takes to maintain an IT estate for a company of any size - I actually laughed out loud when you said " I roll my eyes as to why [laptops] need endpoint management ". Try setting up Microsoft 365 and configuring it for a an organisation with a few hundred staff and you'll quickly find that it is a behemoth of configuration, licensing, and policy decisions. Many people make running one part of 365 their entire full time careers, and 365 as a whole is just one part of what an MSP would manage. But in one sense it's good that you don't know this, because if your IT team is doing things right then the average user, no matter how technical they might be, won't see any of this and will have no idea of the myriad things that go into making sure everything works and is both reliable and secure. It's a never-ending task.

MSPs are, in your terms, the equivalent of cloud providers who handle all of the IT work for you so you don't have to employ people to manage your network or your laptop fleet or your identity provider or your updates, etc. This often includes significant elements of, or potentially all of, a company's cyber security. They also can become your de facto data and information protection people and consequently take on compliance responsibility.

They are a very large "thing" in the corporate world in the same way that cleaning services or catering services or legal services or any other types of service provider are a "thing". They are not the future though, they are the present, and will continue to be for as long as companies have tech support needs. Some companies will use them, some will not, and that will always be the case.
posted by underclocked at 11:37 PM on February 1, 2024 [3 favorites]

The MSP market is huge. Everyone from your local legal office, to your medical clinic, to auto garage, to print shop, to consultancy firms - a substantial number of these businesses will have support contracts with MSPs.

For them, it's like an insurance. If their tech goes wrong, they won't be at a loose end on a Monday morning phoning around looking for a tech. For example, if your Office 365 email goes down - it can mean downtime for a substantial number of businesses.

You need to look beyond the repair paradigm. Most of their work these MSP firms do will be support for stuff like Office 365, Azure, Sharepoint, backup, wired and wireless networks, printing and security. If something like a laptop breaks down due to over-heating or whatever, most will just recommend to their clients to replace it and not repair it.

As for on-prem support, most MSPs seem to prefer to do it remotely as it saves them time and money. But on the other side of the coin is those on-prem visits also provide an excuse for up-sell opportunities.

The MSP is a very interesting business model. MSPs will try to force their preferred technology solutions onto their clients because, understandably, they want their repertoire of solutions to be as streamlined as possible. The second part of the MSP business model is sales. I once heard an old joke that an MSP is really just a sales operation with a tech bit bolted on. From my observations of the MSP market, this sometimes rings very true.
posted by jacobean at 3:27 PM on February 2, 2024 [1 favorite]

Prior to my current job, I was a technician for a local MSP for five years. We had 80sih clients, all small businesses, and we basically handled all of their IT needs. We'd deal with their ISP, build their network infrastructure, setup and maintain their servers and network storage, handle hardware and software purchasing, configure their firewalls, consult with them on their future IT needs, negotiate their copier/printer contracts, administrate their G-Suite or Microsoft 365 accounts (or their almost-always-completely-unnecessary-on-prem Exchange server), manage their on- and off-site backup schedules, configure and manage their PBX (I think we were some kind of 3CX partner or something), fix their printers, setup their presentation and virtual meeting equipment, take care of their Zoom accounts, make sure their antivirus software was up to date, keep track of their equipment -- we handled basically everything except their cell phones and websites (though we did manage their domains). Most of our clients had only a handful of employees -- like 5 to 10 -- and our largest client had around 60. We weren't particularly heavy handed in our endpoint management, unless that's what the client wanted.

Over that time, we had three to four technicians, counting the head of the department. The billing team had two to three people. And then there was the business owner, who handled all the tracking down new clients and coming up with service agreements. Much of our work was done remotely, as most support calls boiled down to forgotten passwords and software issues, and the rest was handled in person as needed. Even though our team was pretty small, we were able to handle the 80ish clients we had.

Our clients ranged from doctors and lawyers to construction companies and design studios. Some of our clients could have handled their IT needs on their own, and some of them would have needed to hire their own IT person. With the caveat that I have no idea what we were charging, I think we provided a worthwhile service to most of our clients.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 4:59 PM on February 2, 2024 [2 favorites]