How to Break up With Your Managed IT Service Provider
Breakups are never easy. This is also true for breaking up with your managed IT service provider. If you’ve finally seen the red flags and realized that it’s time to get out of the relationship and move on – DON’T! At least not yet…
Just like any separation, there are things you need to have in order before pulling the trigger. Here’s a complete guide of everything you should have handled before breaking up with your future ex-MSP:
Get a Handle on Your Licensing
It’s important to get a handle on your licensing and understand what you’ll lose when your MSP goes. Connetic makes sure you own all of your own licensing, but a lot of MSPs get commissions by reselling licenses to you and managing them. You need to know what you are going to have to replace. These are typically things your MSP may be “white labeling” to you. For each one, you need to make a plan with your new MSP (Connetic!) to take them over as quickly as possible. Your new MSP will consult with you on a plan to replace these services, which include:
- End-point protection (anti-virus)
- Backups
- System monitoring
- Mobile Device Management
- Cloud-hosted traditional servers
Get You Passwords From Your Managed IT Service Provider
Make sure to gather all your passwords. If you don’t have a password manager like LastPass or 1Password, get one. Setting up a password vault is a great excuse to press your current MSP to give you your passwords. If they refuse to provide passwords to your own systems, that’s a huge red flag that they weren’t looking out for your best interests in the first place. Be thorough and get passwords for platforms and services, including:
- DNS services
- Web site
- Cloud services
- On premises firewall and WiFi
- On premises servers
Adjust Your Expectations
Understand how well it will go. If your former MSP is going to take it personally, you need to prepare for them (at best) not helping, and at worst obstructing your transition. This can range from ghosting you and not responding to requests for information that your new MSP needs to know to deliberately refusing to turn over licensing information or passwords in an attempt to hold you hostage. If this happens, the “nuclear option” for you is what’s called a zero-knowledge takeover, in which your new MSP resets passwords and cancels contracts to engage new ones. Zero-knowledge take-overs will impact your end-users and often involve a small amount of downtime, but they do work. They’re the “rip the band-aid off” worst case solution to preventing vendor lock-in. Predicting how your future ex-MSP is going to react will help prepare your new IT Support Service Company (Connetic!) for the smoothest possible transition.
Connetic Will Always Take Care of You
At Connetic, our fixed-price, unlimited IT support services model keeps us constantly searching for ways to keep our customers safe. Not only are we transparent about our pricing, we are transparent about everything. We always set our clients up for success in any way we can, even if it’s preparing for a breakup because your company has outgrown our services. To put it frankly, we always want what’s best for you.
Contact Connetic’s IT services team to learn more about how you can benefit from Connetic’s extensive experience and exceptionally managed IT services.
