What The Average Fire Department Can Teach MSPs

By Peter Briden, business coach and former MSP

My good friend and managed services provider (MSP) CEO Michael Halperin once asked me, “What does the average fire department spend 2 to 5 percent of their time doing?” Being a former volunteer fireman, I knew the answer was fighting fires, but hadn’t given much thought as to why and the parallels to the managed services world of today.

What Has Changed?

One hundred years ago, whole towns and cities burned down from a single event. Today, fire departments spend very little time actually fighting fires but the damage caused by a fire is far less dramatic.

• Building codes and materials. Today we have learned how to build and maintain infrastructure so it minimizes the risk of fire as well as the amount of damage a fire causes. In the MSP world, we call these best practices and the consistent implementation of them creates reliable and predictable IT infrastructure.

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