The Master Service Agreement (MSA) looks at the system overall and contracts out those elements of the system that can be maintained together. This could be the whole system or it could be only particular elements of the system. The MSA is a legal agreement with services to be provided in return for fees and levels of performance required and penalties for lack of performance. The MSA can be drawn up to represent an agreement between the IT department and internal (insourced) or external (outsourced) service providers. If the MSA does not cover the whole system, a separate Service Level Agreement (SLA) can be drawn up which contracts out those elements of the system that cannot be covered by the MSA.
Master Service Agreement (MSA) looking at the system overall and contracting out those elements of the system that can be maintained together.
