Computer Service Partners: Managed Services Meet Rugged Solutions

Life’s good for Computer Service Partners, an MSPmentor 100 organization. The nearly 20-year-old custom IT solutions company based in Raleigh, N.C., has grown into a roughly 50-person company targeting small and midsized business (SMB) throughout the United States focused on data center initiatives, virtualization, unified communications and ruggedized computing. So what’s new? Here’s some perspective from CSP Director of Managed Services John Kilgore (pictured).

About six months ago, CSP rolled out a set of backup disaster and recovery tools to add to its current repertoire of solutions, which already includes network security, mobility and wireless, and ruggedized computing. The ruggedized system is designed for field workers such as police officers, fire fighters, construction workers and others who work in extreme environments.

For example, CSP partnered with Panasonic to develop  Rugged laptop products and the Arbitrator mobile digital recording system — designed specifically for law enforcement and homeland security officials. Kilgore said the company has already received extremely positive feedback on the new disaster recovery tools from its clients. So what’s next? “In the next [fiscal] quarter we plan to release a hosting antivirus suite using Symantec Endpoint Protection,” said Kilgore. The solution is still in the developmental stage.

Seasoned Talent

Aside from its development skills, Kilgore says the company’s biggest asset involves attention to client needs. “We have highly skilled engineers who are also highly customer focused,” said Kilgore. He said CSP does not hire any junior level engineers.

CSP conducts either quarterly or semiannual business reviews with its MSP customers, all of which sign long term contracts with the company of at least one year. “We used to allows short-term contracts but we found that long-term contracts are good for us and our clients,” said Kilgore. “It gives them price protection and it gives us guaranteed revenue.”

Those long-term contracts are actually more like long-term personal relationships between CSP and each of its clientele. The company won’t reveal how many customers it has, but Kilgore said CSP solicits feedback from every customer each month and uses some of the information to drive a portion of the company’s tech developments. Kilgore said CSP’s goal is to add 24 new managed services customers this year.

No doubt, the best MSPs are focusing closely on customer relationships, building tight business bonds that rivals — including cloud giants — can’t break.

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