The document discusses managed services and managed service providers. It describes how MSPs can provide defined IT services to clients to help manage things like multiple locations, large workforces, specialized skills, and rising costs. Key benefits to clients include peace of mind from 24/7 monitoring, single points of contact, lower total costs of ownership, and more value from services. Key benefits to MSPs include more business contracts, increased revenue per user, and providing added value to clients. Typical MSP architectures include data centers, provisioning managers, monitoring servers, and application servers. Managed services can improve agility, reduce costs, improve focus on processes over technology, and increase reliability, scalability, security, and sustainability.

1. Jayant Jindal

2. A managed services provider, is an I.T. services provider, provides a defined set of services to their clients, thus providing the value.

4. M.S. model can be can be used for following situations : The organization has multiple locations of operation The organization has large number of work force The resource pool for processes are underutilized. The skills required for managing operations are specialized. The cost of operations is going up.

5. Key customer benefits of Managed Services are: Customer peace of mind – monitor network on 24x7x365 basis proactively. Single point of contact for all issues. Single supplier instead of multiple vendors. Defined Service Levels (SLA’s) Avoid costs of building own management & reporting systems Lower Total Cost Ownership (TCO) for client Provides in lesser cycle time, more value to the Client.

6. Key service providers benefits of Managed Services are: More Business contracts – extended longevity. Increased ARPU (average revenue per user) . Ability to interact with & influence customers at a business/application decision making level. Providing value to the client of the Services availed by adding value.

7. A typical high-level architecture of a managed services platform consists of : - Data center. Provisioning manager. Monitoring server. Application server. Virtualization components. These components serve as the back-end of the managed services environment.

8. Compare Dedicated Architecture to a Scalable Managed Architecture

10. Managed computing uses the concept of SLAs (Service Level Agreements) to control, the use and resources, by third parties. Any SLA management strategy considers two well-differentiated phases: Negotiation of the contract. Monitoring of its fulfillment in run-time.

11. Users do not own the physical infrastructure. They rent usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service. They pay only for resources that they use. Servers are not unnecessarily left idle. Users do not have to engineer for peak load limits. With increased high-speed bandwidth, response times has been greatly reduced.

12. Agility . It improves with users able to rapidly and inexpensively re-provision technological infrastructure resources. Cost . Is claimed to be greatly reduced and capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure. Focus On Process And Execution, Not Technology . No application or tool will work without the right process around it. The best MSPs start with the right methodology .

13. Reliability . Improves through the use of multiple redundant sites. Scalability . Through dynamic "on-demand" provisioning of resources. Security . Typically improves due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc. Sustainability . It comes about through improved resource utilization and more efficient systems.

14. To sustain Managed Services model, it is not enough to focus on the mere Centralization of transaction processing activities. MSP are to be “business-focused” and develop a high performance service culture and establishing best practice processes.

15. Managed Services providers can generate scale-based synergies as more Managed Services contracts are agreed. The larger the scope of the agreement, the greater the potential for Managed Services providers to maximize efficiencies and reduce costs.

16. The process of transitioning a Managed Services model can be split into three manageable phases, each phase being crucial for the success of Managed Services to be operational. Developing the Strategy Operational Blue Print Implementation

17. Staff Augmentation Model : Previously organizations were once confined to the staff augmentation model for growth, they can now engage managed services – a model that can allow organizations to grow without hiring additional employees. The Managed Services Model: Managed service is a model within which client organizations outsource the management and operation of support systems to external service providers which includes management, monitoring, and maintenance of systems and datacenter infrastructure

18. Significant resources and expertise in building and managing next-generation data centers . The barrier to entry is also significantly higher with capital expenditure required and billing and management creates some overhead . Nonetheless, significant operational efficiency and agility advantages can be realized, even by small organizations, and server consolidation and virtualization rollouts are already well underway.

19. Even if data is securely stored by Managed Service Provider, many factors can temporarily disrupt access to the data, such as:- Network outrages. Denial of service attacks against the service provider. Major failure of the service provider infrastructure.

21. Microsoft is building a new managed services solution to enable partners to create a services-based business by delivering remote IT managed services to small and midsized organizations. Supported by System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Operations Manager 2007) and System Center Essentials 2007 (SCE 2007) technology, this combined solution creates a powerful platform with which you can provide remote software update management, monitoring and troubleshooting of customer environments over a secure internet connection. Customized reports to show your customers the value of the services you provide.

24. Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 is specifically designed for IT professionals working in midsize businesses who often face IT challenges similar to those of larger enterprises—troubleshooting end user problems, automating management tasks, managing multiple systems, and diagnosing and resolving IT problems. Advantages are: Unified Experience, Proactive Management, Increased Efficiency

26. The service provider installs Operations Manager 2007 at their premises. The service provider site regularly synchronizes with Microsoft Update (MU) and receives update content and metadata. Customer devices make sync. with the SCE 2007, which in turn communicates with Operations Manager 2007 at the service provider site.

27. Unify your IT management experience Keep applications and network up and running Troubleshoot problems more quickly Keep track of hardware and software assets Gain visibility into IT environment

28. Microsoft® System Center Essentials 2010 (Essentials 2010) will offer integration of physical and virtual server management and monitoring into one product and one console. Essentials 2010. Provides a unified solution with a single console for managing a broad range of tasks across your servers (virtual and physical), clients, hardware, software, and IT services for a unified experience.

29. Enables you to proactively manage your IT environment, helping keep your system up-to-date with a solution that accelerates problem resolution and enables automation of system updates and data collection. Is easier to deploy and maintain helping simplify complex management tasks for increased IT efficiency.

31. elhiDevs India Architects User Group Delhi Chapter PeopleWare India http://delhiitpro.groups.live.com http://www.delhidevs.com http://delhitechnogradz.groups.live.com http://techtogether.groups.live.com http://www.dotnetbuzzdelhi.com http://www.wetohether.in http://iaugdel.groups.live.com UGs in Delhi http://groups.google.co.in/group/thedelhibloggers

32. [email_address] http://jayantjindal.blogspot.com http://www.microsoft.com/Systemcenter/essentials/en/us/default.aspx