Do IT Yourself or With a Service Provider? (2025)

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Do IT Yourself or With a Service Provider? (1)

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When I was in college, my summer job was as a painter. I painted the outside and the inside of new and existing homes. I painted with a sprayer and a brush and roller. I even stained woodwork. All the work I did, directly impacted the revenue, profit, and success of the painting company I worked for. Needless to say, I know A LOT about painting! Since that is the case, I always do all the painting in my house.

Now, when you are neck deep in delivering IT yourself, it is very important to make sure you have organizational and technical expertise and that you’re directly impacting the business. The IT organization must be aligned with the business and have mature processes and procedures. The IT organization must also have wide and deep knowledge in IT technologies. In today’s business climate, the IT department is no longer able to hide behind the curtain and be satisfied with taking requests from their user population. The successful IT organization engages with their business leadership regularly, proposes ways to impact revenue, and delivers responsive service. In some cases, it makes sense for organizations to provision and manage IT infrastructure internally. In many other cases it doesn’t and then there are service providers that can help. To help you get started with an evaluation of your own situation and make a decision about doing IT yourself or with a service provider, I’ve provided a sampling of questions in 3 areas.

Is provisioning and managing IT infrastructure strategic and a core competency?

Begin by identifying whether provisioning and managing IT infrastructure is a core competency. In most businesses, it’s the Applications that are strategic and impact the business, not the IT infrastructure. Here are some of the key questions to ask yourself.

  • Does IT infrastructure directly impact business revenue and profit?
  • Does my company gain competitive advantage by performing IT infrastructure services?
  • Does my company market and sell IT infrastructure services?

How mature are the IT infrastructure delivery services?

Once you identify that provisioning and managing IT infrastructure is or could be a core competency, the next thing to understand is the IT delivery team’s level of maturity.

  • Are there Run Books, documented processes and procedures, for provisioning and managing servers, storage, backup, network, etc. infrastructure and are they updated consistently?
  • Has a standard delivery model like ITIL been adopted and institutionalized?
  • Has an IT governance set of processes been implemented?
  • Are the business users satisfied or, better yet, happy with the service?

These questions delve into documentation, processes, and procedures that directly impact the ability of the IT team to deliver a highly available and responsive service.

How deep and wide are the skills of the IT staff and how effective is the team?

If you are this far along in your evaluation, this is a critical area in which to focus. The skills of the delivery people are essential to the quality of the IT infrastructure service. Here are some of the questions you should ask yourself in this area.

  • For each area of IT infrastructure, how many years of experience do the employees have?
  • For each of IT infrastructure, how deep is their level of knowledge?
  • Is the IT infrastructure running at a high level of availability?
  • Is the team capable of designing and architecting the IT infrastructure?

Summary

As I stated earlier, the IT department and the services it supplies can no longer operate from “behind the curtain”. Any IT department that continues to operate this way will be maligned, ignored, and supplanted eventually. There are many different service providers that offer a variety of services in a variety of ways that help businesses achieve their goals every day. Each IT department should understand their strengths and weaknesses in terms of business impact and decide whether to continue delivering IT infrastructure services internally or to partner with a service provider that they feel comfortable with. Once this is achieved, the IT staff can devote their time to aligning with the business and contributing directly to the bottom line!

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Do IT Yourself or With a Service Provider? (2025)

FAQs

What is a service provider example? ›

Examples of potential service providers for a company are advisors, individual consultants, law firms, design shops and investment banks.

Why do I need a service provider? ›

Whether it's IT support, legal advice, or medical services, they offer expertise that their clients may lack. Cost-Effective Solutions: By outsourcing specific services to providers, businesses can often reduce costs.

Why choose a service provider? ›

They bring expertise.

The best service providers won't claim expertise in every approach or technology out there. They will, however, bring expertise in the areas in which they are highly qualified – the ones with which you need assistance. Make sure their expertise and your needs align.

How do you use Internet service provider in a sentence? ›

It was only by chance that the internet service provider had a record of the man's address and police were able to help him. Once an item has been identified, it sends the internet service provider an advisory note, seeking its removal.

What is the meaning of IT service provider? ›

An IT Service Provider (sometimes called a Managed Service Provider, or MSP) is a proactive IT firm that anticipates the needs of its clients and delivers a wide array of technology services.

Which of the following are examples of service providers? ›

Examples are the telephone companies (see common carrier), Internet service providers (see ISP), application service providers (see ASP), storage service providers (see SSP) and content providers (see digital service provider and cable TV).

Who is called a service provider? ›

A service provider (SP) is an organization that provides services, such as consulting, legal, real estate, communications, storage, and processing services, to other organizations. Although a service provider can be a sub-unit of the organization that it serves, it is usually a third-party or outsourced supplier.

What is the difference between service and service provider? ›

It may be a validation service, authentication service and so on - a class or bundle that you pass data to and get something in return or simply ask to do some work, depending on the service. ServiceProvider on the other hand is a class used to bootstrap the service, ie.

What is service provider responsible for? ›

A service provider is responsible for delivering professional quality services on behalf of a business or organization, usually an internet or cable provider.

What is the use of service provider? ›

What Does Service Provider Mean? A service provider is a vendor that provides IT solutions and/or services to end users and organizations. This broad term incorporates all IT businesses that provide products and solutions through services that are on-demand, pay per use or a hybrid delivery model.

How to be the best service provider? ›

Listen – Great service providers listen first, listen more, and listen well. They make sure they really hear what clients are saying before responding – and they're wise enough (and perhaps humble enough too) to let other people including other service providers in the room talk first.

What is the right to choose service provider? ›

This important right means that, for instance, should you decide the waiting time for your ADHD or ASD assessment is too long, then you can choose an alternative provider to suit you. Right to Choose within mental health is a relatively new scheme (since 2018) and as such, many patients are not aware of the options.

What is an Internet service provider answer? ›

An internet service provider (ISP) is a company that provides access to the internet. ISPs can provide this access through multiple means, including dial-up, DSL, cable, wireless and fiber-optic connections. A variety of companies serve as ISPs, including cable providers, mobile carriers, and telephone companies.

What are 4 examples of Internet service provider? ›

Examples of ISPs are:
  • Comcast.
  • AT&T.
  • Time Warner Cable.
  • CenturyLink.
  • Charter.
  • Verizon.
  • Cox.
  • Google Fiber.

What is the role of your Internet service provider? ›

ISPs make it possible for customers to access the internet while also providing additional services such as email, domain registration and web hosting. ISPs may also provide different internet connection types, such as cable and fiber. Connections can also come in the form of high-speed broadband or non-broadband.

What makes a company a service provider? ›

A service provider is any person or company that processes personal information on a business's behalf pursuant to a written contract, provided that contract meets specific requirements.

What are examples of a provider? ›

A provider is a person who gives someone something they need. If your parents both have jobs so they can feed you and buy you what you need, you can call them providers. Your mom's a provider if she works so she can care for you, put food on the table, and send you to school.

What is a company service provider? ›

Company Service Providers CSPs are entities or individuals providing corporate services, by way of business, including formation of companies, directorship/company secretary services and the provision of registered office, business, or correspondence address for businesses. FIND OUT MORE.

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