Expected Outsourced IT Services: What All MSPs Should Offer

Expected managed service provider (MSP) services are offerings provided to organizations of various sizes that can be included in the company’s packages to remain competitive. Over the years and with the evolving IT landscape, expectations of MSPs have increased.

Currently, users want MSPs to incorporate additional services such as managed backup and recovery, data protection, desktop management, cybersecurity, storage, and networking services. Further, emerging technologies, such as AI and multi-cloud platforms, are providing new opportunities for companies to offer best-in-class services to customers and MSPs are beginning to help those companies along on that journey.

Why MSPs should offer a standard set of services

Managed services providers supply outsourced third-party IT services to companies to assist them by taking on the ongoing, day-to-day responsibilities, monitoring, and maintenance of a broad range of tasks and functions.

The IT outsourcing services are typically bound by a contract between the MSP and the customer, with a standard service level agreement (SLA) outlining the expectations and quality metrics of the delivered services.

Common MSP business functions could address many facets of a business, including:

• IT services
• Marketing 
• Human resources
• Contingent workforce
• Supply chain 

MSPs should offer a standard set of services to customers to simplify customer selection, streamline their own operations, improve pricing transparency, enhance customer experience, and ensure consistent quality across client bases.

By offering a standard set of services that customers can utilize, MSPs deliver reliable IT support and make it easier for leaders to manage expectations. This is especially critical for small businesses that may not have in-depth technology knowledge to navigate complex service options.

Backup & recovery services

One unique service that MSPs can offer to customers is backup and recovery services. These services involve making duplicate copies of critical data to restore it when necessary and protect organizations from data loss.

Data loss or corruption can occur when hardware or software fails, natural disasters occur, cyber attacks happen, or through human error. Most modern backup and recovery services incorporate disaster recovery, business continuity, and backup with built-in ransomware protection.

• Disaster Recovery (DR): These services take backup a step further by including alternative data centers, standby colocation infrastructure, and other features designed to help businesses recover swiftly from a natural disaster, cyber attack, or grid failure.
• Business Continuity (BC): Business continuity adds organizational, documentation, and human aspects to DR, such as drills to verify the plan’s workability, lists of phone numbers, and addresses where personnel should go if the office is unreachable.
• Backup with ransomware protection: Includes cloud backup services that include built-in ransomware protection to prevent backups from being infected by malware.

Cybersecurity services

As threat actors increasingly improve their means of breaching systems, cybersecurity services are critical offerings from MSPs. These services help customers protect their networks and data from cyberattacks and mitigate risks. Cybersecurity services will often include incident response, forensics, training, and risk mitigation.

The benefits for customers seeking to outsource cybersecurity services include:

• Receiving unbiased, third-party assessments of the customer’s current cyber posture.
• Implementation of security controls to mitigate cyber risks.
• Designing and implementing proactive security strategies for detection and response.
• Development and implementation of cyber incident response.
• Cyberattack recovery services.
• Cybersecurity training services to ensure best practices.
• Improvement of stakeholder confidence in a customer’s information security arrangements.

Networking services

MSPs offering networking services provide applications or services hosted on a network to provide functionality for customers or other applications. These typically run on-premises or in the cloud and are accessed by customer devices over a network. Through network services, organizations can maintain effective communication channels, enhance productivity, and ensure information exchange across networks is secure.

Examples of network services include:

• File services that allow files to be shared and stored on a central server.
• Print service allows for the management of print jobs over a network.
• Messaging (email) service enables sending, receiving, and storage of emails.
• Database services provide centralized access to databases.
• Web services to host and deliver web pages to users.
• DNS service helps translate domain names into IP addresses.
• DHCP service provides the allocation of IP addresses to devices on a network.

Data protection and management

Organizations seeking IT outsourcing services to safeguard their data should consider data protection and management services offered by MSPs. These services include tools, practices, and policies to safeguard data from unauthorized access, corruption, or loss.

Having strong data protection and management for your organization is like insuring your data to protect against the worst-case scenarios.

Storage technologies can protect data through disks, tape, or cloud backup. Additional software tools, such as cloning, mirroring, replication, snapshots, and changed block tracking, can provide another layer of data protection. Further, cloud backup is becoming more prevalent, replacing on-site disk and tape libraries as organizations move their backup data to public clouds or clouds maintained by third-party service vendors.

Collaboration & communication

These services are digital platforms or tools that enable organizations to work together effectively by facilitating the exchange of information, ideas, and feedback through various channels, including messaging, video conferencing, document sharing, and project management services.

Examples of these tools include:

• General communication platforms: Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat
• Document collaboration tools: Google Docs, Microsoft Word Online, or Dropbox
• Project management tools: Asana, Trello, or Jira
• Video conferencing platforms: Zoom, Webex, or Skype

These tools not only help create a modern workplace but also boost employee productivity and allow innovation to thrive in a secure digital collaboration environment.

These services can enable teams to work together from anywhere, anytime, and accommodate individual needs and workstyles. In addition to ensuring smooth workflows, collaboration, and communication services allow organizations to expand their hiring beyond their geographic location, enabling them to hire the best possible candidates for roles, not just the most convenient ones.

Emerging services MSPs should start offering

IT outsourcing services will have to evolve to maintain pace with the ever-shifting IT landscape. Organizations want to utilize emerging technologies to improve business outcomes, and MSPs should aim to help them meet those goals.

The biggest emerging offerings for MSPs will revolve around AI and automation. Predictive analytics, machine learning, and automated workflows are becoming critical parts of organizations, both big and small. Reducing downtime and enhancing overall system performance will be key for MSPs moving forward.

As multi-cloud adoption continues to trend upward, MSPs will look to excel in managing these infrastructures to help customers with seamless integration, optimal performance, and cost-effectiveness.

Further, edge computing and IoT integration are other areas in which MSPs will seek to provide services. Edge computing brings data processing closer to the source, which will require MSPs to manage distributed infrastructure efficiently. Meanwhile, integration with IoT devices will demand robust connectivity, security, and data management solutions.

Additionally, cybersecurity will continue to have an increased emphasis on the channel. Cyber threats will continue to be a top priority for businesses, and service offerings will involve security measures, continuous monitoring, threat detection, and rapid response capabilities.

What MSPs shouldn’t offer

MSPs should avoid offering services that fall outside of their core competency or managing IT infrastructure. That includes services requiring significant expertise that doesn’t fall under their purview. MSPs should only offer what they can deliver.

Providing offerings that MSPs lack expertise in can lead to quality issues, inconsistency, and a lack of focus on their primary value proposition of ongoing IT management.

MSPs can ultimately be critical tools for organizations, providing cost savings, improved security, and scalability services. Businesses should weigh the pros and cons of MSPs and ensure they have a cohesive strategy for utilizing them.

The services and solutions that MSPs provide depend greatly on the technologies shaping channel growth strategies. Read more about how AI, data resilience, security, and managed services are shaping strategies in 2025.