CIOs sometimes find that the best way to become more agile is to bring in outside help. While outsourcing has always been an option, the emergence of cloud computing has created a broad industry of service providers -- ranging from large, global providers to small boutiques with specialized services-- that offer their expertise over the Internet or off premises.

A managed service provider (MSP) can simplify a process, decrease time to market, or handle a surge in computing demand. “We are seeing the break-up of the IT business,” says Nick Ellis, Vice President of Global Service Provider Sales at CA Technologies. As that happens, certain parts of enterprise IT departments have become like Lego® building blocks, which makes it easier for CIOs to slot in MSPs to offer software, infrastructure or platform services that IT would otherwise offer itself. It’s part of an overall strategy to make the IT operation more cost-effective, agile and flexible. Businesses want “to reduce complexity, which ultimately reduces costs,” he notes.

MSPs often can offer commodity services, like extra storage capacity, website hosting or even additional processing power, more efficiently than in-house IT. Educational Testing Services, for example, which annually helps process The College Board’s Advanced Placement exams, now relies on its MSP’s private cloud to handle spikes in demand every spring.

But CIOs also use high-end MSPs for mission-critical functions and high-end applications. David Gehringer, principal at Dimensional Research, an IT research firm, has noticed that companies are increasingly willing to outsource security functions. “Companies have realized that having a security officer, a security strategy and a qualified staff for that is costly,” he says. If security is not part of your core business, it may be better to outsource to a specialist. Over the last year, he says, “we’re seeing moves to MSPs for that kind of a skill set.”

At the same time, CIOs are also using small, boutique MSPs that specialize in particular software development skills, Gehringer says. Rather than try to hire additional staff with very specialized skills, such as modifying applications for mobile device access or designing a web interface on an enterprise application, it can be quicker to bring in an MSP.

“People are realizing what their core differentiator is,” Gehringer says. “And they are outsourcing the rest.”

For more about how MSPs can offer business agility, read the full article in Smart Enterprise magazine here.