Prateek Garg is an entrepreneur and a technology visionary. Prateek was felicitated at the 9th ‘Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards-2018’, where he received the award for his continued efforts and innovations in the field of ‘IT, Internet and Telecommunication’. Prateek has chaired the Western UP Zonal Council- Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as Vice-Chairman (2013-14) and as Chairman (2014-15). He is the CII Co-Chairmen Northern Region (2019-20) for Artificial Intelligence (AI).
It is expected that by the end of the year 2023, the managed services market will be growing from USD 180.5 Billion in 2020 to USD 282 in 2023, at a CAGR of 9.3%. By the end of the year 2020, the Global Managed Services Market is expected to reach USD 245 billion.
As reported by experts, the managed services market is anticipated to witness a CAGR of 11.27% over the forecasted period of 2020 to 2025, of which Indian MSPs are going to be a trendsetter.
With the world witnessing a paradigm shift in terms of recent technologies and trends, businesses have redefined their way of working. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in disruptions in various sectors such as Retail, Hospitality, Aviation or Automobile, etc. The outbreak has brought the economy of the country to its knees. But the IT sector has managed to stay afloat and become a leader during these difficult times.
The work-from-anywhere culture, technological advancement, rising competition, and most importantly, the pandemic situation has made it more challenging to run a business. With the enhanced aspects of business operations, managing unpredictable expenses and their complexity under a single umbrella becomes backbreaking and hefty. This is where Managed Service Providers (MSP) serves as a true IT partner.
What Is A Managed Service Provider?
A Managed Service Provider offers managed services to end-users and organizations on a proactive basis. It is an outsourced third-party company that manages and assumes the responsibility of providing day to day IT services to the customers. The term MSP traditionally was applied to IT infrastructure or device-centric types of services but has expanded to include any continuous, regular management, maintenance and support.
MSPs have been in action since the 1990s and were responsible for remote IT infrastructure management (RIM). However, now with the advancement of technology, their portfolio of services has been expanded. MSP’s have become an integral part of the progressive IT companies.
The requisite services that Managed Service Providers provide are-
- Service Desk
- Digital Workplace Services
- Data Centre Management
- Disaster Management
- Cloud Services
- Network Management
- Cybersecurity & GRC Services
- Data Analytics & AI/ML Services
When you have outsourced your managed services, you can then focus on your core business –vision, strategies, and growth, instead of being bogged down by operations. A managed service provider can handle one or more aspects, especially the supporting areas so that the businesses can focus on its core competencies. They guarantee round-the-clock availability, security, and experience management and improves flexibility, reliability and performance for your business while being a single point of accountability.
As per conventional wisdom, people believe inhouse operations are always cheaper than outsourcing, but conventional wisdom forgets to discount the cost of time involved in carrying out repetitive routine functions. Therefore, MSPs serve as an efficient option for carrying out routine functions. Nowadays, the cost of setting up and maintaining an IT infrastructure is too high, especially if you are a small business operating with limited resources. Also, you have to keep on investing additional amounts in keeping the systems updated.
MSPs are considered to be a strategic method feasible for enhancing daily enterprise-related operations, and by doing so, companies can avoid the direct cost of managing the program themselves.
How Indian MSPs Are Outperforming Global Competitors
Indian MSP has a greater focus on partnership, i.e. they act as a partner who understands the business goals of their customers and are better equipped to improve their partner’s business strategically. They are more willing to conduct in-depth discoveries to understand and provide tailored solutions to their customers. India was hosting more than 1,150+ global in-house captive centres, which allow almost half of the top 500 global companies to work in India.
Focus towards offering cost-effective solutions with the available pool of local IT talent and the emergence of innovative IT startups. Thus
- Controlling IT costs
- Increasingly specialized technologies with the primary focus on operational efficiency
- Domain experts managing the IT operations
- Innovative solutions fueled by startups
- Stable Government and Supportive Policies
- Second-largest English-speaking population in the world after the USA
Service providers maintain service relationships with their customers based on agreed-upon service levels called SLA, which is an agreement between the service provider and customers to define key service targets and responsibilities. The future of service levels will be measured by experience, not SLAs.
SLAs measure the process or completing an objective. Experience Level Agreements (XLAs), on the other hand, measures the outcome and value. MSPs should quickly imbibe XLAs to deliver positive end-user experiences and drive productivity and business value; thus, MSPs need to constantly monitor, manage, and maintain experience.
With the rising competition, rapid progress in technology, shrinking of capital budgets, it is difficult for businesses to keep up with the trends. However, even in such case scenarios, Indian managed service providers with the help of their gamut of services, predictable expense, and a large pool of talent, are a boon to organizations who are looking forward to implementing cutting-edge business practices for enhancing revenues. Without any doubt, partnerships with Indian-based managed service providers have optimized their operations and fostered innovation without having the organizations alone to fight an increasingly uphill battle.