Size of MSPs
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@Breffni-Potter said:
How are you defining the concept of MSP?
A provider of managed services (in IT.) I think the real question is how "managed services" are defined. NTG provides IT services, not managed services. If you work with traditional MSPs, it is really clear the difference. They have packaged managed services that they predefine, often tied to their VAR side but not necessarily.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
I've never heard of NTG in the UK pre-Spiceworks.
NTG didn't enter the UK until after being active on Spiceworks. No idea what this is implying.
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@scottalanmiller said:
NTG didn't enter the UK until after being active on Spiceworks. No idea what this is implying.
In relation to what you originally said which was:
@scottalanmiller said:
From what I have seen in dealing with communities like Spiceworks, MSPs are extremely small. It appears that the average MSP is a part time affair, typically one IT guy supplementing his day job. A few are multiple part timers like this.
What seems to be rare is the staffed MSPs that have dedicated IT and business functions that have enough people to qualify as a team and be able to have schedules, shifts, vacation, training and other internal resources. The ability to consult each other and bounce ideas, double check things, hand things off, etc.It's like, your set of data is Spiceworks, so you are making a decision that everyone is tiny
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@Breffni-Potter said:
http://www.phoenix.co.uk/accreditations/
https://www.softcat.com/what-we-do/managed-services
http://www.qubicgroup.com/pages/qubic/about-us.phpWhat were this links supposed to be for? Those look like MSPs. Notice that SoftCat, for example, has to develop each "managed service". They aren't providing straight IT, they have to make a service package before providing it. That's the MSP model that I'm talking about. Phoenix, for example, has a heavy focus on their partners which generally implies a similar model.
So yes, this is data supporting how I was explaining MSPs, if that was your intent.
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....But how can you call Softcat "Tiny"
Their annual boat party budget at 1 mil probably blows most SMBs out of the water.
Just seems crazy to call most MSPs tiny when there are a huge number of bigger players out there.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
It's like, your set of data is Spiceworks, so you are making a decision that everyone is tiny
As SW is the largest global pool of the market, it's a decent reference point. Few other resources have thousands of MSPs in one place to compare them. I know of no one else offering a self registration global MSP directory, for example, either.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
....But how can you call Softcat "Tiny"
Their annual boat party budget at 1 mil probably blows most SMBs out of the water.
Who called them tiny? Certainly not me.
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@Minion-Queen said:
@Aaron-Studer said:
How full time staff members does NTG have?
We have a total of 8 full timers and about 40 or so part-time/contractors that work with us when project needs arise.
For comparison, Bundy & Associates is 4 full time employees, 2 part time employees, and a number of contract employees available for project work.
Our client base is also a lot smaller. than NTG's.
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@scottalanmiller said:
As SW is the largest global pool of the market, it's a decent reference point. Few other resources have thousands of MSPs in one place to compare them.
But no one past a certain size seems to care about being represented there. So your data is skewed about representation of MSPs to begin with?
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HTS has 1 emp. he wants to be a MSP, but alas, i'm an IT guy who works for himself.
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But surely the directory is broken even more, if a one man consultant with a website is an "IT Service Provider" on the community, then that skews the data even more.
Maybe the issue is no one knows how to classify providers anymore? Bit like "Cloud" services.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
As SW is the largest global pool of the market, it's a decent reference point. Few other resources have thousands of MSPs in one place to compare them.
But no one past a certain size seems to care about being represented there. So your data is skewed about representation of MSPs to begin with?
That's true to some degree. Although some large shops are there or have been there. But you assume that there are an abundance of large shops and few small ones and only small ones take the time to have a social media presence or build an online reputation. What makes that true? You are assuming that there is a high percentage of large shops and that they just aren't visible with online presences. What makes that true?
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I guess it's because I worked for a shop which had 6 staff, plus contractors, X number of clients. We heard and dealt with many other shops of a similar size, none of whom had a presence on Spiceworks. In fact there are even smaller outfits with 1-2 people who have not heard of it.
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All the MSP's I know of have at least 20 employees.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
But surely the directory is broken even more, if a one man consultant with a website is an "IT Service Provider" on the community, then that skews the data even more.
How does it skew the data? Are you saying that you are correct by defining shops smaller than you want to be an MSP to not be an MSP and therefore the data is correct because the answer defines the data? I don't understand.
My whole point is that the average MSP is likely very small, based on what I've observed over the past decade, because of exactly this - tons of MSPs are one man shops. I guess you are saying that @Hubtech is not an MSP then? If so, what is that company?
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@scottalanmiller who knows.
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@scottalanmiller said:
NTG really isn't an MSP, we are an IT Outsourcer,
@Carnival-Boy said:
I have no idea what the difference in. From Wikipedia : "Managed services are the practice of outsourcing day-to-day management responsibilities and functions as a strategic method for improving operations and cutting expenses." That sounds like IT outsourcing to me.
@scottalanmiller said:
In practical terms, MSPs are the companies that do "managed services" which are predefined and typically billed on a per unit basis. It's that it is "managed services".
As an IT Outsourcer we act exactly like an internal IT department, not like a managed services vendor. MSPs are like many outsources like ADP for example. You adjust to them, not them to you. They have a specific service that they offer, and it is good, but you need to make your workflow work with them.
IT Outsourcers outsource IT only, not only IT in the form of a "managed service." It is a far more flexible service type.This this this.....
Bundy & Associates is an IT Outsourcer, not an MSP. We do not sell blocks of time or managed services.
We sell our time, billed hourly. Period. We do not resell hardware. We do not resell software.
We are a full IT Outsourcer. Among our employees, we can do anything IT related, from networks, to servers, to desktops, to helpdesk, to software develeopment, to business intelligence.
This is what an IT Outsourcer is. We are oyur IT department. We are just not your employee.
To be our client you have to let us be involved in your businiess plans in order to alow us to apply the appropriate IT solutions to fit your business needs and goals.If you cannot do that, then we will not want to be your IT company.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
I guess it's because I worked for a shop which had 6 staff, plus contractors, X number of clients. We heard and dealt with many other shops of a similar size, none of whom had a presence on Spiceworks. In fact there are even smaller outfits with 1-2 people who have not heard of it.
But how does that affect the data? I've worked with very large shops that use it too, but that doesn't imply that the percentages are mostly that it is large. It's a sampling, that's all, and what you are defining is the nature of sampling. There is literally no means of getting data that is not a sampling. So what do you suggest as a means of polling MSPs to find out size?
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@nadnerB said:
All the MSP's I know of have at least 20 employees.
None of the hundreds or thousands you know of here or in SW do. How do you know that they have that many? NTG does, sort of, if you include the part timers. Then we are way over twenty.
Because of the nature of MSP services (instead of IT Services) there is a tendency to have a lot of non-technical or L0 workers to take calls, do monitoring and run through scripts as a big piece of the value behind managed services is making them require as little IT knowledge as possible. So real VAR and MSP business models allow for larger staff than IT Outsourcing models.
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Look at where @thanksajdotcom is. He works for an MSP that is a real MSP/VAR. They focus on one product, the services are managed (predefined packages) and they have a lot of staff. Some of that staff is pretty technical. But a lot of it are not even really IT people but just call center staff who take calls and run through predefined scripts that they do not necessarily even understand.
When MSP models get larger, this is a very typical way that they staff up. That's not good or bad, just why they tend to get a lot of staff quickly when being successful.
But as someone who knows hundreds or possibly thousands of MSPs directly and has serviced many, the number that are that large are pretty small. But they certainly exist. NTG used to do all of the IT for an MSP that was over 65 people! Not one of them would I classify as an L1. They were all "bench support" or "call center" staff. Anything requiring IT knowledge, including extremely basic internal IT, had to be outsourced to NTG.
