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Earlier this year, Sonian commissioned a study which found that 79% of managed service providers believed their greatest threat comes from other cloud providers. Compare this with 2011 when only 50% of MSPs viewed other cloud providers as threats and you can see where we are headed.
Is this fear warranted, though? Let’s take a closer look.
Evolution of MSPs
Looking back over 25 years you can chart a distinct evolutionary path successful MSPs have taken. I say successful because those who failed to evolve are no longer in business. The path starts from basic monitoring and management, and adds new service capabilities such as backup, security solutions, patching, voice, virtualization, etc.
MSPs who survived over throughout these years did so by adapting their service capabilities. Often, these changes would occur on an annual basis, requiring almost constant engineering and business planning on the part of the MSP, all in an attempt to remain relevant.
The age of cloud has brought another evolutionary inflection point for MSPs and it is time again to either change or wither away.
MSP Options in the Cloud
As the above mentioned study suggests, MSPs are already fearful of the cloud as a source of competition. Assuming this fear is real, what can be done about it?