Throughout the years of my work in the IT industry, and having the opportunity to work with many customers who have either decided they wanted to embark upon moving to an MSSPs, or that have started the journey. In many situations, it is not always the happiest of working relationships. The customer feels that the MSSPs has failed to deliver on the promises and the opportunities that are supposed to complement using an outside company to supplement your own organization’s capabilities. From the outsourcer’s perspective, the customer doesn’t appear to be flexible to adding on additional services or capabilities to their current contract.

When I was brought in to help resolve these issues, it usually comes down to a couple of things that are complicated to fix.

The first thing is the expectation setting. There always seems to be a disconnect between what the customer expects and, ironically, was the MSSPs expects. Yes, each organization feels let down.

The second burning issue is a failure to understand each other’s roles and responsibilities.  And this is big item adding to this pile of misplaced accusations and expectations, is the inability to innovate.

In this series, I’m hoping to help you understand how to leverage and MSSPs, or in fact, any outsourcing arrangement that helps deliver success for both organizations.  The MSSP business is continuing to grow (link to a summary report on 2014 Global MSSP market), but for it to be successful, both sides of the equations (the customer and the provider) have to mature

But, the first thing I wanted to do, is to stop blaming each other, and realize that it comes from both sides.