Cloud managed service provider (MSP), an expert that sees beyond today's cloud service

With the recent acceleration of digital transformation, the Managed Service Provider (MSP), a cloud-based operating service, has become more important, and the MSP-related market is rapidly expanding and shows much potential. Following the trend, the existing SI companies are seeking ways to transform themselves into MSP operators.

The concept of MSP and the difference between MSP and CSP

Why has MSP become a hot topic lately? MSP stands for Managed Service Provider, indicating businesses that provide operational services. SI companies are mainly involved in the provision of IT operation services.
However, what makes the MSP business outstanding is that it is cloud-based. It operates the standardized cloud service provided by the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). The CSP services include Amazon AWS, MS Azure, Google GCP, and Naver NBP. Samsung Cloud Platform, officially launched by Samsung SDS in the second half of 2021, is also garnering a lot of attention.

Why MSP? Why do companies pay attention to MSPs?

As businesses are increasingly relying on IT technology and competition grows, the demand for outsourcing IT tasks, cloud management, and security is increasing, allowing organizations to solely focus on their core functions. As a result of the continuous progress, cloud services are also widely introduced in businesses and public sectors. As the need for new technologies, like hybrid and multicloud, increases, various issues, such as the establishment of governance and related regulations, lock-in solutions for CSPs, and the acceleration of the modernization of applications, are emerging. Meanwhile, companies are required to work on continuous cost reduction and task optimization using cloud services.

[MSP Service Areas]

[Changes in MSPs]

The scope of MSP services and changes

The scope of MSP services is divided into a professional service that provides cloud consulting, architecture design and building, and migration services, and a managed service that provides cloud-based operation and technical support.
The role of MSPs continues to change as the environment evolves. We are consistently implementing automation-based operations, such as application modernization from cloud infrastructure-centered environments into cloud-native environments, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
MSPs have secured differentiated competitiveness by providing various cloud methodologies, architecture centers, processes, solutions, and platforms based on their experiences.

[Samsung SDS cloud methodology - cloud migration (rehost) example]

[Samsung SDS Architecture Center]
(https://cloud.samsungsds.com/serviceportal/intro/architecture.html)

MSP market status and trends

While traditional industries face growth limits, tech-based digital innovators and new businesses are accelerating their emergence. To overcome such crises and gain competitiveness, efficient business operation and rapid digital transformation are essential, and the cloud service lies at the center of the journey.
Since many companies are using different types of clouds for technical, cost, and regulatory reasons, integrated cloud management capabilities have become an important aspect. For example, companies working with a MSP can operate their business more efficiently, compared to when hybrid cloud (public+hybrid) and multicloud (public+public) exist together. Clients want to use multi/hybrid clouds in order to address concerns over lock-in effect of certain CSPs and utilize optimized services, and an integrated operation via a MSP is preferred.

The continuous growth of the MSP market

The MSP market, including the CSP market is growing at a CAGR of 17.6%. As MSPs are increasingly providing a variety of services, including consulting, new technology, and Application Modernization (AM), both the domestic and global MSP markets are expected to grow rapidly. Following the trend, MSP operators are expanding their businesses from cloud infrastructure-oriented implementation and operation to high-capacity consulting, cloud-native, SRE, and AI/Big Data. SI operators are also rapidly changing their constitution to cloud-based MSP operators by reorganizing their businesses and organizations and hiring cloud experts.

[MSP market size]

[MSP player trends]

MSP technology trends

As mentioned earlier, many enterprises are migrating their legacy systems to the cloud. Applicable technologies vary greatly depending on the cloud migration level of the legacy systems.

For example, you can use cloud native applications or change the platform. The most stable and simple way for migration is to create and copy the operating system (OS) image as it is. You can also build and apply a business system by introducing Software as a Service (SaaS) instead of developing applications.

Six types of cloud migration - 6R

There are 6R types of cloud migration that provide methodologies optimized for target-specific environments. The 6R types include Retire, Retain, Repurchase (SaaS applied), Rehost (image copy migration), Replatform (platform change applied), and Refactor (MSA applied). The early stage of the cloud was centered on rehosting, but the demand for cloud-native (Replatform & Refactor) is gradually increasing. To go into more detail, Rehosting provides the exact same environment by hosting the existing infrastructure again using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), along with the lowest risk and relatively low cost of transition.
Replatforming changes products, such as OS, DBMS, and middleware, with no changes to the application architecture. Refactoring redesigns and redevelops your application architecture to implement cloud native. It is the most difficult and expensive migration method, but business agility and cloud optimization will be the two strong points. As you can see in the figure above, MSP ensures clients’ digital transformation by utilizing different technologies and services provided by CSPs, including the 6R cloud migration, design/implementation, and operation.

The MSP technology of Samsung SDS: SRE and DevOps

Now, we will look at the SRE & DevOps platform, one of the MSP technologies owned by Samsung SDS. Through the SRE & DevOps platform, you can improve development productivity and operating efficiency by enabling automatic implementation of application and infrastructure deployment.

[How to switch to cloud native by area]

[Cloud migration types]

[MSP service range]

[Examples of SRE & DevOps platforms]

[DevOps Delivery Toolkit]

The figure above is an example of the SRE & DevOps platform. To summarize the implementation technology and the effect, the platform complies with open-source policies and is equipped with security features, such as blocking Internet access. Besides, change control can be applied through the Change Management Portal when deploying applications, and it is possible to deploy various applications via CI/CD. The configuration management and automation were implemented by IaC.
IaC has the ability to solve the lock-in problem of CSP by implementing Terraform and Ansible with a multicloud environment. This operation environment enables continuous infrastructure optimization and service and system trust-based SRE operations, including script standardization and integration management, infrastructure and SW installation automation, and CI/CD pipeline automation.

There is also DevOps Delivery Toolkit (DoDT), which provides toolkits consisting of infrastructure configuration/deployment codes, automation scripts, and standard templates as for frequently used tools. The toolkit provides automation scripts for standard template DevOps-related tools, making it possible to build infrastructure fast and implement CI/CD pipeline, monitoring, and logging integration quickly with ease.