As a cloud managed service provider, we at Unitas know the power of a solid partnership with our clients. By understanding their businesses and how their internal IT operates, our solutions enable our clients to gain a competitive advantage, lower costs, and reach new markets with Unitas Global cloud solutions.
How do we do this? By asking the right questions.
Whether you are working with an MSP already or are looking to begin an engagement with one, it’s important that the MSP has a deep understanding of what your current IT organization looks like and how it works. A thorough evaluation to determine where you currently are is the first step to moving forward.
These questions give us a clear picture of the challenges they face and their goals for the future. Here are three of the key questions we ask our clients before we begin our engagements.
1. What does your existing network look like?
It is impossible to talk about cloud without discussing connectivity. According to 451 Research, half of organizations name cloud network challenges as the primary obstacle to cloud adoption. Make sure the MSP you choose to work with understands the specific traffic patterns generated by your cloud applications and can offer solutions to get you the speed, efficiency, security, and cost you need from your network.
2. What do your disaster recovery and business continuity plans look like?
Simply put: no business can afford not to answer this question. If your applications are down or your employees are unable to work on them, your business is losing money.
Disaster recovery and business continuity are often conflated but mean very different things. Disaster recovery speaks to restoring IT infrastructure and the technical ability to resume business operations. Business continuity is a company’s ability to maintain or immediately return to business process, procedures, and production. Disaster recovery is about the technology operations, business continuity is about people and process operations.
In today’s global economy, maintaining business operations is critical to remaining competitive. Do you have disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place with your MSP?
3. As your MSP, how can we free up your IT resources and enable you to achieve your business outcomes?
Between routine management and putting out fires, enterprise IT teams often have an overwhelming amount of tactical activities to work on every day (and sometimes even at night). Getting bogged down by day-to-day activities gets in the way of a client’s ability to make strategic improvements to their business.
A great MSP will work with you to figure out which tasks can be offloaded, enabling your IT team to focus on the projects that further your business. Our CTO Grant Kirkwood explains in this video how Unitas partners with enterprise IT teams to do just that.
The questions above foster conversations that should always take place between MSPs and their clients, but there are many more questions to be considered. Ideally, your MSP will want to understand where you are in your cloud journey and where your organization is headed so they can become an extension of your IT team and a critical piece in enabling your business’ success.
