Managed hosting

In computing, a Managed Support Provider (MSP) focuses on providing third-party services principally to information technology infrastructure. While the usage, in 2009, which tends to get the most attention is in the context of cloud computing, MSP services certainly are not limited to things provided remotely to information technology staff.

MSP services can range from a remotely managed router or firewall at the customer premises, to support service for end users such as first-line help centers and backup of individual PCs, to services remote to specific data centers such as disaster recovery, to cloud services where the service is not associated with a specific geographic location.

Services provided through clouds

Messaging

Email is among the most common applications, and one for which many aspects may be outsourced. It is useful to separate the problems that outsourcing can help, from the packaging of outsourced services. Indeed, some of the outsourced services are broader than email, especially when there are regulatory requirements for archiving, audit or security. When sent in a corporate context, for example, instant messaging services may be less formal to the user than email, but still need to be archived for possible litigation or law enforcement discovery.

MSPs list some of the reasons for outsourcing, although it must be remembered that this is marketing. For example, some MSPs say they will not have configuration errors, but no in-house or outsourced service is perfect. What is true is that an MSP that has full-time configuration specialists is less likely to have an error than a small business with a part-time administrator, but the comparison is more difficult for a large enterprise that maintains a skilled in-house staff. The MSP decision is most often based on economy of scale, although it also may consider CAPEX and OPEX, especially when having to meet new regulatory requirements.

• In-house unexpected failures: these are unplanned outages due to errors and disasters
• Data loss windows: depending on the system, there may be a shutdown while a backup is taken, or a backup may not capture the most recent messages; MSPs say they are protected against this because they have multiple levels of offsite service. An enterprise, however, can have multilevel storage, perhaps with a mixture of archives and caches. Multilevel backup may be too complex for a small business.
• Staffing costs
• Need to rearchitect at various levels of scaling or component life
• Optimal copies (i.e., deduplication)
• Validating that archives are tamperproof
• Rearchitecting due to operational or legal changes in data retention requirements
• Unpredictable deployments
• Too much local customization with support knowledge in a few minds
• Limited capabilities of Exchange Server

Service security

There are a variety of good reasons to outsource messaging security functions such as screening for malware and spam, although such outsourcing must fit the enterprise trust and accountability model. Often, different appliances or services are involved with the malware and spam functions, although they may still come from the same MSP. Examples include:

• Barracuda networks, a mixture of onsite appliances and outsourced services
  • Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall
• Dell EMS Email Security, an outsourced service
• Google Postini, an outsourced service
  • Malware services
  • Spam and message security services

Archiving

A basic archive simply provides for backup. A more complex service, which includes not only infrastrcture services but specialized end user services such as legal compliance (e.g., compliance and discovery) can be delivered with Software as a Service (SaaS). As is typical for SaaS, there are different levels of built-in features and ability to customize.

• Barracuda Message Archiver
• Dell, for example, offers a "Rapid Archive", and an "Enterprise Archive" meant for large companies
• Postini

Service continuity

Especially with a distributed workforce, it may be wise to have messaging service that will continue to operate if a customer-owned server fails, or even if the data center is put out of service by a disaster. Various commercial services provide backup email services with standard protocols such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, Post Office Protocol, and Internet Message Access Protocol; proprietary servers with mixed proprietary and standard protocols such as Microsoft Exchange; and end user access such as webmail, Blackberry or other personal devices and text-to-speech. This may be done purely for disaster recovery, but also can be for legal reasons of compliance or discovery, and for cheaper storage of old data.

• Barracuda Backup Service
• Dell EMS Continuity Service