I never understood why companies didn't simply leverage 24x7 internet MSPs.

They are able to staff 24x7 by spreading the cost over multiple customers and working through the process of making your application manageable by a 3rd party is super beneficial.

Most of these companies will also do performance monitoring and analysis as well.

They see issues and optimization opportunities across multiple applications and know more than a single team who's only built one.

That works well for generic IT systems and running the desktop/laptop fleets, but doesn’t work at all for running the software a company builds.

We typically split our teams, so we have ~16 split across two time zones so that our shifts are just 12 hours during the day. It works well, but it is expensive, so we support a lot of services (or a small number of very high priority services) as a result.

Are you speaking from personal experience having worked with one? What was the feedback between application management back to engineering like?

I hadn't heard of Managed Service Providers before, but you make a good case for them.

I'm finding surprisingly little discussion on HN regarding the costs/benefits of MSPs. Or rather, under which conditions (such as company size) they make sense.

Any big players or companies you would recommend?

If an MSP can effectively manage your company’s product, then your problems are simple enough to have automated detection and recovery.