It's natural for things to change, but it is important not to allow change to make you worse off than before. This is known as progress. For MSPs, the evolutionary change can be tracked as far back as when they were VARs desperately trying to find a better business model than reselling product. Most VARs have found the managed services business model to be their ticket out of low margin and unpredictable revenue.
Since 2009, MSPs have been faced with another inflection point where they must choose how they will change; to adopt new service and business model techniques, or do nothing and risk irrelevance, or worse. The MSPs that chose to adopt to the cloud computing mania that emerged in 2008 have faced numerous opportunities and challenges. Perhaps the most significant challenge MSPs have faced deals with the role MSPs enjoy with their customers in this new cloud era.
Don't Let Cloud Make You Irrelevant
Cloud computing, for all the good it has brought, has also forced MSPs to decide how they will interact with their customers: as trusted advisors or brokers of commodity cloud services. Some MSPs have chosen the commodity path and now find themselves facing difficult decision in the future.
Cloud was never about a long term strategy. It was a short term and immediate fix to an urgent economic problem facing the majority of businesses in 2008-2009. MSPs should never forget their function in the world, as trusted advisors who wield great influence with their customers.
Having a cloud strategy and offers customers choice without relegating the MSP to a mere reseller agent is the end goal. An MSP's cloud offering should balance their high value services with their lower margin products. This is the way it has always been, AMD hopefully, the way it will continue to be.
MSPs who make the majority of their offerings commodity cloud offerings risk everything. Not only will the MSP face economic challenges as a result of this strategy, they risk losing the respect and trust of the customers.
