MSP vs MSSP vs VAR: What are the Differences?

Whether you’re a large enterprise or smaller IT business looking to add additional value to your customers or a range of new functions to improve business segments, MSPs, MSSPs, and VARs are three types of third-party companies to assist in your growth journey.

Companies of varying sizes can’t always hire their way into new capabilities or build infrastructures on their own, particularly in the IT space. By hiring out to third-party vendors, a company can fill the gaps in an IT system or staff and provide more services to the end-user.

The first step in deciding to work with a third-party company is to determine what your company needs and what services can be additive to your organization. Whether it’s an MSP, MSSP, or VAR, determining where to make the correct investment before proceeding is vital to success.

What are MSPs, VARs, and MSSPs?

A managed service provider (MSP) generally focuses on providing organizations with a broad range of IT services to help manage and optimize an organization’s IT infrastructure and operations. Among these services can include network management, software updates, help desk support, and IT consulting.

Managed security service providers (MSSPs) offer specialized cybersecurity services to protect an organization from cyber threats. Among the typical offered services are threat monitoring, intrusion detection, firewall management, patch management, endpoint protection, and penetration testing.

Value-added resellers (VARs) meanwhile will focus on selling and implementing hardware and software solutions. They will provide customization to these solutions to meet specific business needs and are often experts in specific technologies.

Key differences between MSPs, VARs, and MSSPs

Which third-party company is best for your organization’s needs? When looking at VAR vs. MSP, the biggest difference is how they’re involved with the end-user. VARs typically operate on a transactional basis or short-term contract. MSPs usually operate on a more long-term basis or with multi-year contracts.

When looking at the differences between MSPs and MSSPs, you’ll find that an MSP provides a broad range of IT services to ensure your IT systems are operational, and an MSSP ensures that your employees, end-users, and systems are safe, secure, and compliant. Further, MSSPs help an organization implement and develop security strategies to boost their cybersecurity posture.

The value of working with an MSP

A managed service provider, or MSP, is an outsourced third-party company that takes on the ongoing, day-to-day responsibilities, monitoring, and maintenance of a range of tasks and functions for another company (their customer), usually through technical support to fix services or through subscription services. They allow for organizations to focus on improving their services without worrying about extended system downtimes or service interruptions.

In getting started with an MSP, communication typically begins with an assessment to help determine the current state of the organization’s environment.

MSPs can handle complex, time consuming, or repetitive tasks involved in the management of IT infrastructure or end-user systems. In addition to working in IT segments, some MSPs focus on specific vertical markets, including legal, financial services, healthcare, or manufacturing.

The responsibilities that MSPs can typically perform include:

• Handling IT infrastructure management
• Offering technical support to staff
• Augmenting cybersecurity solutions and strategy
• Managing user access accounts
• Handling contract management
• Offering compliance and risk management

Enhancing security posture with MSSPs

Similarly, managed security services providers (MSSPs) offer outsourced services to businesses. Where they differ from MSPs is that they specialize in security services that help protect organizations’ IT infrastructure.

MSSPs are great third-party vendors to explore as they can help organizations reduce burden on IT teams, free up time for other operations, enhance internal security capabilities, mitigate security risks, and safeguard digital assets.

Their focus is aimed at monitoring and management, but they can also handle system upgrades, changes, and modifications, along with threat intelligence and best security practices.

Common services that MSSPs can provide, include:

• Managed firewall services
• Instruction detection
• Virtual private networks (VPNs)
• Vulnerability scanning
• Anti-virus services

Additionally, because MSSPs operate from high-availability security operation centers (SOCs), they can operate at a high level, continuously, without intervention, which provides “always on” coverage.

Adding to your business with VARs

Lastly, value-added resellers are companies that resell products and services by adding value to them beyond the original purchase and customizing third-party products while bundling them with additional offerings.

These enhancements to products and services could also mean providing additional hardware, installation services, or troubleshooting. These resellers can effectively create an application for a particular hardware platform and sell the combination as a turnkey service or tool.

Among key attributes of a VAR include:

• Enhancing of products or services from manufacturers to better align with customer requirements.
• Offering a comprehensive one-stop solution by bundling the product with additional services like installation, training, and ongoing support.
• Possessing expertise and skills to provide customers with guidance and assistance throughout the product lifecycle.
• Acting as an intermediary between manufacturers and end-users, simplifying the procurement process and offering a more tailored, customized solution.
• Prioritizing the unique needs of their customers to ensure delivery of a product or service that effectively addresses specific challenges.
• Contributing to the entire value chain by both distributing products and enhancing their utility through supplementary services.

A key benefit of working with a VAR is their ability to identify potential costs and risks in forgoing a new product by retaining an existing one. If licensing is involved, a VAR can also assess the number of licenses required and provide timely software renewals and add-ons to existing orders at prorated amounts so that the software can scale with the client.

Bottomline: Organizations have several options to choose from

There are several options for your organization, should you be looking to expand your technology and service offerings. MSPs, MSSPs, and VARs are all worthy of consideration if your organization has little to no internal IT staff, need to free up your IT staff to complete other tasks, or need guidance in different areas of IT and cybersecurity.

There are many third-party companies that can provide customers with valuable services and information to an organization, but comparing and researching which company is key to ensuring you’re taking the best pathway forward.

Read more here about the differences between MSPs and other types of IT service providers.