Organizations face mounting pressure to innovate faster while keeping costs manageable. Some companies handle everything in-house, while others turn to managed service providers (MSPs) and managed services integration to get the job done.
According to Research and Markets, the managed services market will reach $410 billion by 2027, a 2.6% CAGR from the $343 billion mark in 2022.
But here’s the thing: building and maintaining services internally works for giants like Google and Meta. Small and medium enterprises rarely have the headcount or budget to pull it off from scratch.
If you’re weighing managed services integration for your organization, this guide covers everything you need to know, from core concepts to implementation steps and the tools that make it all work.
Key Takeaways
- Managed services integration connects multiple service providers through a unified ecosystem, enabling seamless data flow between your organization and MSPs.
- SIAM and ITIL4 frameworks provide structured approaches to managing risk, reducing costs, and improving service delivery across integrated systems.
- The right integration platform should offer bidirectional sync, AI-assisted configuration, flexible field mapping, and enterprise-grade security.
- Integration reduces expenses, boosts productivity, and improves both customer and employee satisfaction but comes with challenges around third-party dependency and interoperability.
- Practical use cases span support escalation, multi-vendor project coordination, and MSP client management across platforms like Jira, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Freshservice, Freshdesk, Salesforce, and Asana.
What Are Managed Services?
Managed services represent a cooperation model where a third-party company takes partial or complete control of specific operations within your organization.
This third party is your managed service provider (MSP). When security is the focus, they’re called a managed security service provider (MSSP). MSPs can function as an extension of your IT team or handle everything end-to-end as a fully-managed service.
Managed services work well for time-intensive, business-critical processes: cybersecurity, risk management, regulatory compliance, and IT infrastructure. Essentially, any function that demands specialized expertise without diluting your core business focus.
Examples of Managed Services
- Cloud Computing: IBM and Oracle lead the cloud computing space, delivering managed cloud services to enterprises, SMBs, nonprofits, and government agencies. These services cover infrastructure management, platform services, and application hosting, eliminating the need for in-house data center expertise.
- Marketing: Organizations outsource copywriting, campaign planning, content distribution, sales enablement, and advertising to managed marketing services. This approach gives companies access to specialized talent for SEO, paid media, and brand strategy without building full internal teams.
- Supply Chain and Logistics: FedEx and Amazon operate as intermediaries for logistics services, resource sourcing, and distribution. Managed supply chain services handle inventory optimization, demand forecasting, and last-mile delivery.
- Payroll and HR: Companies worldwide use HR management software like Ceridian for payroll, employee performance tracking, and tax management. Deloitte reports that 73% of organizations outsource some payroll responsibilities. Selecting the right payroll system is crucial, whether you manage it internally or through an MSP.
- Communication: Managed communication service (MCS) vendors enable team and stakeholder collaboration. They handle instant messaging, VoIP, and AI chatbots as part of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). Major MCS vendors include AT&T, Verizon, and Cisco.
- Security: MSSPs like Cipher, Trustwave, NVISO, and Symantec manage cybersecurity audits, incident response, firewall administration, threat monitoring, and compliance reporting. These providers maintain 24/7 security operations centers that most organizations couldn’t staff internally.
- Financial Services: Accenture and the Big Four (Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PwC) deliver finance service management through audits, forecasts, analysis, and consulting, along with HR and payroll services.
What Is Managed Services Integration?
Managed services integration connects multiple service providers to ensure frictionless cooperation between teams. It involves using an integrator to manage and unify all your managed services into a cohesive ecosystem.
In IT environments, the service integration and management (SIAM) approach helps companies manage risk effectively, reduce costs, build transparency, and boost end-user satisfaction.
SIAM isn’t the only IT service management (ITSM) model available. The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) offers another framework for delivering high-quality IT services. The latest version, ITIL4, enables businesses to manage risks, improve customer satisfaction, and create stable environments for growth.
The key difference: SIAM extends beyond customer satisfaction to cover business requirements, service delivery mechanics, and quality control reporting.
How Integration Connects the Pieces
When your organization works with multiple MSPs—say, one for cloud infrastructure, another for security, and a third for IT support—each provider operates in their own system. Without integration, your teams spend hours copying data between platforms, chasing updates via email, and reconciling conflicting information.
Managed services integration creates automated data flows between these systems. Work items created in Jira can automatically generate corresponding tickets in ServiceNow. Status updates in Freshservice can sync to Zendesk. Custom field values in Salesforce can populate related records in Asana.
The result: a unified view of operations without manual data entry or constant platform switching.
How To Implement Managed Services Integration
Successfully integrating managed services requires careful planning and execution. Here’s a systematic approach:
Identify Your Needs
Start with an in-depth analysis of your business requirements and current workflows. This assessment reveals which areas need service integration and management.
Let’s say you have five managed services you want to integrate. Consult your teams to determine priority. Which integrations would eliminate the most manual work? Which would reduce the most critical data gaps? Which touches the most people?
Common starting points include:
- IT support ticketing between internal help desks and MSP systems
- Security incident escalation from MSSP platforms to internal tracking
- Development handoffs between engineering tools and external vendors
- Customer feedback loops between support platforms and CRM systems
Create an Integration Plan
With your needs mapped, develop a detailed integration plan covering:
- Delivery timeline: Realistic phases with milestones
- Coverage scope: Which systems, which data fields, which directions
- Budget: Platform costs, implementation resources, ongoing maintenance
- Scalability requirements: Expected growth in sync volume and connections
- Success metrics: How you’ll measure integration effectiveness
In some cases, you’ll need to work directly with your MSP to develop this plan, especially when the integration touches their internal processes.
Select a Trusted Integration Vendor
Choosing the right integration platform determines whether your managed services integration succeeds or struggles. For organizations relying on multiple managed services, iPaaS solutions like Exalate enable bidirectional data synchronization across disparate systems.
Even when evaluating less prominent providers, verify their track record and industry expertise. Check customer references in your sector. Review their support model and response times. Examine their security certifications and compliance documentation.
Establish SLAs
Your cooperation with the integration vendor should be covered by service-level agreements outlining the scope of your collaboration. These SLAs ensure alignment between your organization and the vendor on expectations, responsibilities, and remedies.
SLAs also provide recourse if the provider fails to meet obligations. Suppose you’re integrating managed communication services with payroll systems. An SLA should specify compensation if the integration exposes your infrastructure to security incidents.
Key SLA components for integration vendors include:
- Uptime guarantees (typically 99.5% or higher for enterprise platforms)
- Support response times by severity level
- Data security and privacy commitments
- Change management procedures
- Termination and data portability terms
Implement the Solution
With your team aligned and SLAs signed, implement the integration.
This phase involves preparing your team for the new data flows. Suppose a managed marketing services provider handles your outreach campaigns; your internal team needs clear communication channels for sharing feedback and reviewing synced data.
Here’s a practical example: You use Jira for internal development tracking, and your IT support MSP uses ServiceNow. To move away from manual data sharing and establish a seamless connection, you can integrate Jira and ServiceNow bidirectionally.
Create a customized connection, automate the sync, and set rules specific to your use case, such as syncing only critical work items or syncing comments while excluding internal notes.
Monitor Performance
Your MSP handles everything covered in the SLA, but you still need visibility into integration performance. Track key metrics:
- Sync success rate: Percentage of successful data transfers
- Latency: Time between source change and destination update
- Error frequency: Failed syncs and their root causes
- Data accuracy: Spot checks comparing source and destination records
- Uptime: Integration platform availability
Performance monitoring tools like New Relic and AppDynamics can track your broader IT infrastructure, including integration endpoints.
Practical Use Cases for Managed Services Integration
Here’s how organizations apply managed services integration across different scenarios:
Support-to-Engineering Escalation
Case: A SaaS company’s customer support team uses Zendesk. When customers report bugs, support agents create Zendesk tickets. The development team uses Jira and rarely checks Zendesk, creating delays in bug fixes.
Solution: Integrate Zendesk and Jira bidirectionally. When a support agent marks a ticket as a bug, it automatically creates a corresponding work item in Jira with all relevant details: customer description, reproduction steps, priority, and attached screenshots. When developers update status or add comments in Jira, those changes sync back to Zendesk, so support agents can update customers.
ITSM-to-Development Handoffs
Case: An enterprise IT team uses ServiceNow for incident management. Infrastructure problems often require code fixes from the development team using Azure DevOps. The handoff process involves copying ticket details into emails and manually tracking status across both systems.
Solution: Integrate ServiceNow and Azure DevOps. Critical incidents automatically generate work items in Azure DevOps when they require development action. Resolution updates, deployment dates, and developer comments sync back to ServiceNow, so the IT operations team maintains visibility.
Multi-Vendor Project Coordination
Case: A manufacturing company works with three MSPs: one for ERP management (using Salesforce for project tracking), one for cybersecurity (using ServiceNow for incident management), and one for IT infrastructure (using Freshservice for change management). Coordinating projects that touch multiple vendors requires extensive manual communication.
Solution: Integrate Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Freshservice with your internal Jira instance. Create sync rules that share relevant project updates, milestone status, and dependencies across all connected systems. Each team works in their native platform while seeing related information from other vendors.
MSP Client Management
Case: An MSP provides IT support to 15 clients, each using different ticketing systems: some on Jira, others on ServiceNow, Freshservice, Freshdesk, or Zendesk. MSP technicians waste hours logging into multiple client systems to check ticket status and provide updates.
Solution: Integrate all client systems with the MSP’s central platform. Technicians work in one interface while data syncs bidirectionally to each client’s native system. Clients see updates in their familiar tool without knowing the MSP uses a different internal platform.
Freshservice-Freshdesk Coordination
Case: A company uses Freshdesk for customer support and Freshservice for internal IT operations. Customer-reported technical issues often require IT intervention, but the two teams work in separate systems with no visibility into each other’s queues.
Solution: Integrate Freshdesk and Freshservice so that customer tickets requiring IT support automatically create corresponding service requests. Status updates, resolution details, and internal notes sync between systems while respecting team-specific confidentiality rules.
Benefits of Managed Services Integration
Organizations implement managed services integration to achieve measurable improvements:
Reduced Expenses
MSPs use pricing models tied directly to services delivered. This transparency makes budget management straightforward.
More significantly, integration eliminates the time cost of building and maintaining individual connections. Your teams aren’t manually transferring data between systems. You’re not hiring people just to keep MSP relationships coordinated. The integration platform handles the heavy lifting while your team focuses on higher-value work.
Calculate time and money savings from automated bidirectional sync.
Improved Productivity
Integrating managed services ensures your teams channel resources into business-critical activities instead of administrative data management. Specialists at your MSPs handle their domains while integration keeps everyone informed.
The productivity gain compounds over time. Teams trust the integrated data, so they stop maintaining parallel tracking spreadsheets. Meetings shorten because status information is already visible. New employees ramp faster because they don’t need to learn multiple MSP systems.
Better Service Reliability and Customer Satisfaction
MSPs bring industry expertise and operational experience that improve service reliability. When they handle backups, your data stays safe even during infrastructure failures. When they manage security, threats get detected and neutralized by dedicated analysts.
Integration amplifies this reliability by minimizing communication gaps. MSP updates flow automatically to your systems, so nothing falls through the cracks. Customers experience consistent service because the entire delivery chain stays synchronized.
Broader Scalability
Managed services integration gives your organization flexibility when expanding or contracting operations.
Want to add a new MSP for a specific function? Update your integration plan and connect them to the ecosystem. Need to scale back during slower periods? Adjust the SLA scope without rebuilding integrations from scratch. The integration platform adapts to changing requirements without forcing architectural overhauls.
Higher Employee Satisfaction
When you integrate managed services, you relieve workload pressure on your teams. Employees spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on meaningful work.
This shift improves morale. People didn’t join your organization to copy data between systems; they came to contribute expertise. Integration lets them do exactly that while automated processes handle the coordination.
Stronger Security Posture
Integration doesn’t mean open access. Modern integration platforms enforce granular controls over what data flows between systems and who can configure those flows.
MSSPs integrate their security monitoring directly into your incident management workflow. Threats detected in their systems automatically trigger responses in yours. Security updates and compliance reports sync without manual file transfers that could introduce exposure.
Challenges of Implementing Managed Services Integration
Managed services integration delivers significant benefits, but plan for these hurdles:
Third-Party Dependency
Integrating managed services hands over operational control to external providers. If the MSP experiences outages, that portion of your business becomes inaccessible until they resolve the issue.
This dependency extends to your integration platform. If the integration goes down, data stops flowing between systems. Build redundancy into critical paths and establish clear escalation procedures for integration failures.
Cost Considerations
MSPs can help you maintain predictable budgets, but their services aren’t cheap. Large enterprises absorb these costs without issue, but SMEs and nonprofits often struggle when integrating multiple managed services.
Integration platforms add another cost layer. Factor in subscription fees, implementation costs, and ongoing maintenance when calculating the total cost of ownership.
Privacy and Security Risks
In January 2023, MailChimp reported a data breach that exposed user data. If you were using MailChimp for marketing, your customer data could have been caught in that breach.
Every integration point represents potential exposure. Evaluate MSP security practices carefully. Review their incident history, audit their compliance certifications, and ensure contracts include breach notification requirements.
Communication Gaps
Integration automates data flow, but it doesn’t automatically fix organizational communication problems. If you lack proper structure for handling information across teams, integration won’t solve the underlying dysfunction.
Establish clear ownership for integrated workflows. Define who monitors sync status, who handles errors, and who makes decisions when systems disagree. Without this governance, information silos can persist even with technical integration in place.
Interoperability Challenges
Not all systems play nicely together. When integrating new managed services with existing ones, compatibility issues surface: different data models, conflicting field definitions, incompatible authentication methods.
A flexible integration platform like Exalate handles many interoperability challenges through configurable mapping and transformation rules. But some scenarios require custom development or workarounds that add implementation time and complexity.
SLA Limitations
In 2020, Boardman Molded Products sued MSP Involta for $1.7 million in damages for negligence and culpability in a security breach.
SLAs document expectations, but they don’t prevent conflicts. When integration failures cause business impact, finger-pointing often follows, regardless of contractual language. Build relationships with your vendors beyond the legal agreements. Clear communication and mutual accountability matter more than ironclad contract terms when problems arise.
Conclusion
Managed services integration helps organizations combine multiple MSPs into a cohesive ecosystem, boosting performance, reducing costs, and optimizing team productivity. When working with numerous incompatible service providers, integration solutions maintain smooth communication and efficient operations.
Exalate is an integration platform that helps businesses integrate with MSPs and MSSPs across platforms, including Jira, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Salesforce, Azure DevOps, Freshservice, Freshdesk, Asana, and GitHub. It enables bidirectional data synchronization using custom configurations and event-specific triggers, withan AI-assisted setup that reduces implementation complexity.
FAQs
How does SIAM differ from ITIL4?
SIAM (Service Integration and Management) and ITIL4 both provide frameworks for IT service management. SIAM focuses specifically on managing multiple service providers, addressing business requirements, service delivery, and quality control across vendors. ITIL4 offers broader guidance on IT service delivery, customer satisfaction, and establishing stable growth environments. Organizations often use both frameworks together.
What platforms does Exalate support?
Exalate supports integration across major enterprise platforms, including Jira Cloud, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Salesforce, Azure DevOps (Cloud and Server), Freshservice, Freshdesk, Asana, and GitHub. The platform also offers REST API capabilities for custom integrations with specialized systems.
How does AI-assisted configuration work?
AI-assisted configuration lets users describe integration requirements in natural language rather than writing code manually. The AI generates sync rules, field mappings, and automation triggers based on your description. Exalate’s Aida assistant helps users plan integrations, generate configurations, and troubleshoot issues, reducing implementation time and lowering the technical expertise required.
What security features should I look for in an integration platform?
Prioritize platforms with encrypted connections (TLS 1.2/1.3), secure authentication (JWT, OAuth 2.0), and role-based access controls. Verify compliance certifications like ISO 27001:2022 for mature security practices. Check the vendor’s Trust Center for SOC 2 reports, penetration test documentation, and incident response procedures. Exalate maintains security documentation at trust.exalate.com.
How do I calculate ROI for managed services integration?
Compare your current manual effort against automated integration costs. Factor in time spent on data entry, status meetings, error correction, and cross-system coordination. Estimate productivity gains from eliminating context-switching and faster information access.
Can Exalate handle cross-company collaboration with external partners?
Yes, Exalate handles cross-company connections where you sync data with external partners, vendors, and MSPs while maintaining control over what information gets shared. You define sync rules that determine which fields flow between organizations and under what conditions, keeping sensitive internal data separate from partner-visible information.
What happens if my MSP uses a different system than my internal teams?
Integration platforms bridge different systems through connectors and field mapping. Your internal team might use Jira while your MSP uses ServiceNow; the integration translates data between both platforms automatically. Users work in their native system without knowing the technical details of how data reaches the other side.
Recommended Reads:
- Service Integration and Management (SIAM): The Complete Guide
- An Overview of Integrated Service Management (ISM)
- Automated Integration: A Key to Scalable and Agile Business Operations
- How to Build an Effective SIAM Operating Model
- Integration as a Service (IaaS): Everything Explained
- CISCO Smart Bonding: An Introduction
- Implementing Effective SIAM Operational Delivery through ServiceNow
