What is an MSP?
An MSP (Managed Service Provider) is an IT provider that takes over responsibility for your IT operations as an ongoing service, typically at a fixed price per user per month. The model differs fundamentally from the classic "on-call supplier" that bills by the hour once the damage is done:
- Reactive model: You call when something is broken. The supplier earns money from your problems.
- The MSP model: The provider continuously monitors, maintains and prevents, and earns money when your IT does not fail.
The built-in incentive is the whole point: with a fixed price, every support ticket is a cost to the MSP, and prevention becomes good business for both parties.
What is typically included in an MSP agreement?
The core is roughly the same across the industry: a service desk your employees can call and write to, round-the-clock monitoring of servers, networks and cloud environments, patching of operating systems and applications, backup with documented restore tests, management of Microsoft 365 licences and users (onboarding and offboarding), plus foundational IT security: MFA, endpoint protection and email filtering. The framework (response times, coverage hours and responsibilities) is set out in an SLA, so the service can be measured.
A related acronym is MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider), which specialises in security monitoring (SOC, SIEM). The line is blurry: many MSPs, including us, deliver both to the SMB segment today.
When does an MSP make sense?
The rule of thumb for Danish businesses: from around 10 employees, ad hoc IT starts to cost more in downtime and wasted time than an agreement costs, and up to a few hundred employees, an MSP is typically cheaper than an in-house IT department with an equivalent breadth of skills. A single internal IT manager cannot cover networking, security, cloud and support, and certainly not during holidays and sick leave. Many therefore choose a hybrid: internal IT takes the business-facing work, and the MSP takes operations, on-call duty and specialist skills. See also our overview of IT outsourcing, which goes deeper into the model and the economics.
How to choose the right MSP
Ask concretely: What is the measured response time on the service desk, not the promise, but the measurement? Is backup restoration tested and documented? What does it cost to get out of the agreement, and who owns the documentation? Do you get a permanent contact person who knows your environment? And can the MSP show references from businesses of your size and industry? A serious MSP is happy to answer all five, and puts its SLA openly on the table.
How MI Support IT can help
MI Support IT is a Danish MSP for businesses with 10-300 users: fixed-price IT operations and outsourcing with a 24/7 service desk with response times agreed in your SLA, proactive operations and monitoring, backup and security, at transparent per-user prices. Contact us or book a meeting if you would like to hear what an MSP agreement would look like for you.