Service provider: What’s in a name?

Times have changed in the networking industry, as has nomenclature. In the beginning, carriers were the only service providers. Then came deregulation and divestiture, and the industry was awash with acronyms - PPTs, RBOCs, ILECs, CLECs and BLECs. Next came the Internet Age, and we created a host of new Internet and application service providers (ASP). Today, we still have ISPs, but they provide more than "vanilla" Internet access, and ASPs, but they now are software-as-a-service providers. What has changed is that a whole class of next-generation Internet vendors - MySpace, YouTube, Google and others - are categorizing themselves as content service providers (CSP), and a vigorous class of next-generation networking resellers called managed service providers (MSP) has appeared on the scene.

An MSP can approach the customer from an IT perspective, leading with applications and IT services coupled with communications connectivity and services. This has been the realm of hosting and outsourcing companies such as IBM, EDS and HP. Another form of MSP can approach the customer from a communications perspective, providing a wide variety of managed fixed/mobile voice, data and video infrastructure and services. Within the corporate marketplace, carriers (AT&T, BT, Verizon and so on) historically has performed the MSP role.

Next-generation, communications-oriented MSPs differ from carriers that provide managed services through targeted market focus, IP-centricity and virtualized services, especially VoIP. Today, the focal customer of a successful MSP is almost always small and midsize businesses (SMB). Price sensitivity, bundled service offerings and outsourced management responsibility are the key buying criteria for new SMB customers.

Numerous flavors of successful communications-oriented MSPs exist. These include:

* ?Straitshot Communications, which operates a VoIP-optimized private network with VPN capability, customized application priority, dynamic routing and integrated security services, including wire-speed virus, and intrusion scanning and protection.