About

The origin of Commodity IT is a surprising one. After more than twenty-five years working in technolgy with about fourteen of those years specifically owning and managing a Managed Service Provider (MSP) Brian Largent decided to do the unthinkable… “Give clients exactly what they ask for and want.” This may seem like a no-brainer for business success, but the IT industry and the MSP industry specifically shuns and disparages any IT services that do not fit neatly into the MSPs narrow services stack and business model. The traditional MSP business model is one of highly refined processes, security, best practices, and enterpise grade support. When an MSP is built to exacting standards of quality and service there is little or no room for working outside those standards. Why is this? Because an MSP tends to take on all or most functions of their clients. They become an integral part of their client’s success. MSPs often talk about “relationships” and “partnering” with their clients as well as “taking on all security and system reliability”. In truth the only way an MSP can do this is to seriously limit what their clients can do with their technolgy. You see, a client that has untethered access to their systems is a danger in the eyes of an MSP and their insurance carrier as well as their lending institution. Allowing users to install software without restrictions or remotely connecting to systems from personal home computers is inviting trouble and creating liability to the client and to the MSP… or so it may seem. To an MSP this is a problem. This is a major concern for liability since the MSP can not put faith in end users to make good decisions and will never fully know the clients business or ultimately the client’s tolerance for risk. The business owner may know their risk and know their employees and thus be able to properly calculate the organization’s risk tolerance, but that may not align with the MSPs risk tolerance, and that is where the problem arises. “Risk is the key” in all of this.

In the many years of running an MSP I have turned down about 70% of prospective clients due to the prospect’s unwillingness to adhere to minimum support, security services and standards. Many of these prospective clients wanted desperately to do business with our MSP, but were thwarted by our strict adherence to our own internal policies. Internal policies that put undue and in the prospective client’s eyes, unnecesary financial burden on the client.

What is different about CommodITy IT? We don’t care! Ok, we care, but we took out all the things that make an MSP an MSP out of our products, services, and support and instead “we empowered our clients to make business decisions for themselves. No long term contracts”, no minimum suite of products or services, no annoying long winded sales pitches.