@scottalanmiller said in The MSP Model fails more often than not.:

I'd argue that the more complex it is, the more having good structure and support is important.

I agree and that's where I think internal IT wins. MSPs tend to be very good at IT, but lack the business understanding, because they don't work in the business, they work in IT. Good internal IT staff have both IT and business expertise.

@Dashrender said in The MSP Model fails more often than not.:

Our Payroll is handled by a third party, but it's service we pay for, it's flat rate.

I'm a fan of outsourcing wherever possible and payroll is often a great case for it. It's fairly straightforward, and easily understood by the non-HR people (eg the Finance Director). IT is way more complex, more flexible, constantly changing, and is usually a key part of a business's strategy plan.

Outsourcing IT can work in a large organisation, because the organisation is big enough to justify employing an internal IT expert purely to manage the MSPs, set budgets and define strategy. It can work in a small organisation because, well, small organisations often aren't big enough to justify a full-time IT employee ( there simply isn't enough work to do) and usually don't have complex IT requirements. But in medium sized organisations, outsourcing is likely to suck, for all the reasons I've outlined - mainly conflicts of interest. I've eaten the onion rings, and the fries, and they don't taste good.

@scottalanmiller said in The MSP Model fails more often than not.:

Even if observation doesn't show it, show it with logic. I'm arguing that professionals working in an professional structure have benefits. From everything I know in every field, this is considered common sense, common knowledge and basic business. Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't think that this was an area to be disputed.

I don't know what you mean here, so I can't dispute it Are you saying I don't work in a professional structure?

@scottalanmiller said in The MSP Model fails more often than not.:

Experience should play no part, this is architecture that we are discussing. Unless you work with companies doing A/B with the same staff or roles (I have) you'd never even have an opportunity to test this. Looking at internal vs. external means nothing unless there is a control method for only testing the structural differences. Does that make sense? Otherwise it's like saying that McDonald's is better than Burger King because you tried McD's fries but BK's onion rings. You need to compare the same things to get a good feel, maybe you just don't like onion rings.

No, it's like trying McDonald's burgers and BK's burgers and thinking you prefer McDonald's, then asking every person you know what they prefer and having them all tell you they prefer McDonald's burgers, but then going and buying BK burgers because you believe that in theory, and logically speaking, BK burgers should be better and you don't want experience to play any part.

@scottalanmiller said in The MSP Model fails more often than not.:

An MSP is an employee of the business and the IT guy at the MSP is like the MSP's "hand". Whatever motivation that a normal employee has of a business, an MSP has for that business as well. An MSP is just like an employee there.

Except that as an employee of the business it is next to impossible for me to "bill more" to the business. I'm salaried, so the money I earn is fixed. I can't sell them a SAN and I get the same wage whether I do 40 hours or 60 hours of work a week. Also, if I make my staff redundant, business costs will fall, whereas if an MSP makes someone redundant (ie by suggesting to the business that they don't need as many on-site staff), then the MSP's revenues fall - they are worse off. In other words, internal IT may try and reduce the amount of IT done, whilst an MSP will naturally seek to increase it. So again, there is a conflict of interest.

What do you mean by an MSP has "more concern and ties to the business success...."? As an employee, my primary role is to make money for the business shareholders by adding value to the business. Similarly, an employee of an MSP's primary role is to make money for the MSP. So there is a conflict of interest here. It is in the MSP's interest to bill more, whilst the business will want to bill less. This conflict can be managed, but it requires skills and resources from the business to manage it - skills and resources which likely will not exist in an SMB.

I don't really see any benefits from not having an internal person in that (or any) case. In all my years of IT, I've never seen any upside to external IT (as a structure, the people themselves can be great). We're obviously poles apart in our experiences and so I doubt we'll ever agree.

Where I think that an MSP can work is as an additional resource for the internal IT department. We employ different IT companies to assist us, either when we don't have time to do the work ourselves, or where we lack the skills required for specific tasks and projects.

In most cases, I don't agree with the concept of replacing an internal IT department with an MSP, but utilising one (or more) to work alongside an IT department is great. You get the best of both worlds.

I don't go on SW any more. But if you go on the ML threads a few people are super offended by the internal IT idea

As an example, a user phones the MSP and says "I tried to open our Accounts system and I get a message saying 'not responding'. How does the MSP handle the call? How does it get routed?

Why don't you start a new one?

@Carnival-Boy said in MSP Teams in the SMB:

Is that a good idea? I dunno, I've never ran the figures, but I'm not sure you have either so who can say MSPs are always better?

@scottalanmiller said in MSP Teams in the SMB:

If someone has internal staff and wants to do an MSP cost comparison, that would be interesting. However it is SUPER hard to do unless you want to do a direct replacement

I consider these two statements basically the same. Maybe there's some confusion here. I took your opening post to be about having multiple specialists (a SQL guy, a UNIX guy, a SAN guy) working for an organisation on an as and when basis, versus having a small number of dedicated generalists. Is that right?

@scottalanmiller said in Dedicated IT or Internal IT:

The idea that the two are competition doesn't, in my experience, exist strongly on the one side, but seems to exist very strongly on the other.

I've never seen that. I have quite a few friends that have been moved over from internal IT to a separate IT company. Mostly friends who worked for British Telecom who moved their IT over to Hewlett-Packard, and a couple who worked for the government who moved to Siemens. I assume this is the kind of thing you're referring to? I don't think any of them really cared who was writing their pay cheques at the end of the day. It's never happened to me, but I can't say I'd care one way or the other, either.

Then CapitalBelts decides to outsource its belt manufacturing to Bangladesh, lays off 80% of its workforce, and finds it has no need for IT support anymore.

And do you think you offer good value to your company or do you think they'd be better off outsourcing your position?

I disagree, but let's not get bogged down in specific numbers, it was a long time ago and costs are very different between the US and Europe.

Does anyone else on ML work for an SMB and employ internal IT staff or am I the only one? I'd like some support

$1000 revenue, not profit.

My figures were purely an example. I'm interested to hear real world examples. When I worked for an IT company (many years ago), I was earning the company around $1,000 per day, but getting paid around $100. Even accounting for business expenses and taxes, I'm pretty certain my bosses were making a very decent profit. Whether that was 20% or 5% or 50%, I have no idea. By employing internal IT staff, I'm cutting out the middle-man, and handling the expenses and management myself. Is that a good idea? I dunno, I've never ran the figures, but I'm not sure you have either so who can say MSPs are always better?

@MattSpeller said in MSP Teams in the SMB:

All of those things are true when MSP's are done right!

I agree. The theory is great, but in my experience, reality is very different. I've never known anyone to have a great experience with an MSP.

I don't know what the business models of MSPs are, I'd love to hear from some. But let me guess at this: I employ one full-time in-house IT guy at $50k pa. Alternatively, let's say an MSP employs 10 IT guys at $50k pa. The owner takes a 20% cut on top of that. So the MSP is costing $600k for 10 support staff. To cover that, the MSP has 12 clients paying $50k each. So each client will get the equivalent of 83% of a full-time IT guy.

That sounds great. I would go for that. I'd rather have 83% of an expert, than 100% of a generalist.

But in reality, the owner is more likely to take a 100% cut on top and buy a Ferrari. At least that's been the experience of all the MSPs I've known. The other issue is that other clients may take more than 83% of an expert, they might take 200% because they're idiots and need lots of support. Because all clients are sharing the same resources, and are paying a fixed fee, there is a free-rider problem. It's the same problem at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

@DustinB3403 said in Peter Principle - Where internal promotions occur even if the promotee is unqualified:

The Dilbert principle is probably the correct one, the Peter principle was the only thing I could think of.

In either case a person who is incapable of performing a task is promoted (and with it any professionalism they had goes with em)

I'd say it might be neither. This person may be great at his job but is just an asshole (or twat, as we say in England). I've worked with a few brilliant salesmen who I want to kill. They're awful in every way apart from their ability to pusuade customers to depart with large amounts of cash. These people are rare though.

Of course, your guy is probably useless at his job, but it's not a given from what you've written. The only given is that he/she's a twat.

@scottalanmiller said in Photo storage -Flickr vs Google photos vs ?:

You would not want someone trying to steal from you but be forced to keep servicing them in other ways.

By "stealing" you mean breaking their terms of service for a specific product. Which I don't read. All I'm saying is that as I get more and more sucked into the Amazon and Google ecosystem the greater the risk that at some point I will do something to break one of their terms (or just randomly annoy them) which will cause my account to be deleted. For example, if I return too many faulty electrical goods purchased from Amazon then they will stop me from watching TV or reading my Kindle - even if those goods were genuinely faulty. And there seems to be no arbitration. If you're happy with that situation, then good for you, but I'm not entirely comfortable. I'm not blaming them per se, I just don't want to over expose myself to the whims of a private American company.