Some organisations look towards outsourcing to assist them in achieving their business objectives, and some prefer to retain the delivery of IT services in-house. However, Butler Group is seeing an increasing number of organisations not only using outsourcing to complement the services they are delivering in-house, but also implementing a multi-sourced model – that is, having a number of different providers deliver various aspects of IT requirements.

The Managed Services model should enable effective MSPs to maximise the efficiency and quality of their offerings, due to their narrow focus on an area that can be improved iteratively. Along with the economies that can be derived from operating on a larger scale, Managed Services should be available at a lower cost than the customer organisation could achieve itself, thereby increasing value for the customer organisation.

However, it is not all a bed of roses, and undertaking the use of Managed Services can constitute a risk to an organisation. This is because it can create a dependency on skills from outside the organisation, and thus the extent of this risk should be quantified. If core, value-adding business processes and applications are outsourced to a MSP, the consequential loss of control over available resource levels (if they are not guaranteed) could result in a loss of organisational flexibility.