4:24Key Takeaways
An MSP is an IT department for companies
It began as help desk work — a user has an issue, they call or email, they get a very quick response — and evolved into supporting applications and wider technology initiatives.
An extension of the team, not a vendor
Arthur’s framing is that an MSP should be an extension of the client’s own organisation, and has to consider cyber security, access to data, and backup and disaster recovery.
Plan technology against the next 12 months
Sitting down with a business to understand its plans for the year ahead, then aligning technology to them, is where he says the real benefit shows up.
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What a managed service provider actually does
I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and came to the US in 1979 with my parents, Alexander and Bella, and my older brother. We settled in Randallstown, Maryland, just outside Baltimore, and eventually moved to Pikesville. Today I live with my wife, my two kids Nathan and Riley, and my dogs Zeus and Minnie, in Carroll County.
Klik TV came out of an idea to show a little more of the personality of Klik Solutions — a platform to showcase some of the folks in the organisation, to show how we enjoy having fun, to provide information that is sometimes very technical and sometimes high level, and to showcase our partners and our staff.
It is literally an IT department for companies.
Arthur Olshansky, CEO, Klik Solutions
Initially an MSP is an organisation that provides help desk services to clients: a user has an issue, they call or they email for support, and they get a very quick response. Then it evolved into much more — providing support for applications and a lot of other technology initiatives in an organisation.
We feel an MSP really needs to focus on not just being a service provider, but being an extension of an organisation — our client’s team. It also needs to make sure it considers all the other different components of a technology estate. I am huge on cyber security. I often see companies face major business challenges when they do not have proper access to their data, and that goes into backup and disaster recovery too: what happens if my business suffers a fire or some kind of natural disaster, and how quickly can I get access to my data?
Then there is overall technology planning. An MSP should love to sit down with an organisation, figure out their plans for the next 12 months, and make sure technology aligns with them. Application performance, application availability, business continuity in terms of backup and disaster recovery, cyber security — these are all important factors that are often overlooked and sometimes are not really considered.