InformationWeek

Toys "R" Us Inc., for example, uses Management Reporting Inc. to monitor its network's health. The Franklin Lakes, N.J., company, which has provided MSP services since 1997, uses the same Concord Communications network-analysis tools--Network Health and Traffic Accountant--that Toys "R" Us already has in-house. But Paul Pansini, director of data and voice-network systems, says that because Management Reporting specializes in using Concord's tools, the MSP can get more mileage out of them. "If your MSP can do more with a single tool, you can reduce the total number of tools you're using," he says. "That's another way to reduce costs."

To cope with the dynamic nature of his E-commerce efforts--which include offering turnkey customer-support services for dot-coms--Gary Holmes, director of IT at telemarketing and customer help-desk service provider TeleSales Inc. in Wilmington, Mass., needs to take a more proactive approach to network monitoring. For example, he wants more-frequent and more-detailed trending reports about his network's performance and resource utilization. Since such intensive monitoring would place an inordinate burden on his six-person networking staff, Holmes turned to startup MSP Silverback Technologies Inc., which installed its own proprietary monitoring server into TeleSales' environment to handle traffic and security reporting tasks.

Silverback uses a variety of leading-edge network-management, asset-inventory, and security tools from vendors such as Network Associates, Riversoft, and Sybase, and integrates them using an Extensible Markup Language architecture on the installed server. According to Silverback president and CEO John Igoe, one of the main attractions of the MSP value proposition is that it lets customers retain control of their computing environments. Monthly fees for the Silverback service range from $2,000 to $4,000, depending on the number of managed nodes.

One question this new trend raises for network managers is how to manage relationships with multiple MSPs: One might take care of WAN monitoring while another handles desktop and firewall security functions. Mike Silvey, VP of business development at Riversoft, says that to get the most out of multiple MSPs and their own internal networking staffs, IT departments will need to implement a network architecture that interposes a layer between their infrastructure and the various internal and MSP management applications. He calls this layer a "network-management operating system."

With networking skills so scarce and expensive, Jeff Akers, VP and chief operating officer of Lucent Technologies Inc.'s NetworkCare business unit, says one of the advantages of using an MSP is that it frees a company's top talent to pursue more strategic objectives. Lucent began offering MSP services under the NetworkCare brand after its acquisition of integrator-MSP International Network Services in October 1999.

Hurwitz Group analyst Caryn Gillooly says MSPs can offer an attractive value proposition to IT managers, especially if they can quantify all the potential economic benefits. "MSPs aren't a bad idea, if you look at all the resources--including people, software, and systems--that you need to keep things running 24-by-7," she says. "It's not just a matter of how much less it may cost you to do the same job. There are also the 'soft' dollars you gain by having your systems more available and keeping your customers happier."