Managed Service Providers (MSPs) will remember 2020 as a year of challenges as well as opportunities. The partners and customers of MSPs struggled in coping with the pandemic’s repercussions, and it fell upon MSPs to ensure survival through the new reality — work from home. Hence, MSPs rose to the challenge, and in order to provide value to their clients, they guided them to cloud-based solutions to survive this transition.
Although cloud services had been gaining steam for a long time now, the current global conditions catapulted them into expedited adoption. Even the most orthodox organizations saw the benefits offered by cloud-based services and embraced them. The new trend among MSPs now is to focus on specializations to make themselves stand out in the highly competitive arena. The success of an MSP is linked to the state of its customers. MSPs with specialized talent help their customers overcome the complexities posed by the changing market trends.
Challenges Faced by MSPs
MSPs also ensure that there are minimal risks associated with migrating or maintaining business-related workloads on private, public, and hybrid clouds. They also help businesses keep their data secure by following industry best practices. However, every good thing comes with trade-offs. The delivery of unique solutions and innovative products in a highly competitive landscape comes with various challenges for MSPs.
The margins for MSPs are continuously shrinking year-on-year. Stagnant practices and hitting the ceiling in revenue growth has forced various MSPs to face the reality that major changes are in order for their business. The ease of accessibility and increased competition has led to OEMs directly signing contracts with major clients, leaving MSPs with smaller customers. No matter the venue or channel, cloud resources are difficult to maintain due to their sheer complexity. Another challenge faced by MSPs is the expenses incurred in customer acquisition and lower retention rates.
Right Partnerships Are the Way Ahead
When it comes to getting the desired ROI, it becomes imperative to harness the power of collaboration. MSPs need to strike the right kind of partnerships and join hands with CMPs (Cloud Management Platforms) to leverage the true potential of cloud services. CMPs are renowned for providing automated solutions, and MSPs need to introduce automation into their managed services. MSPs also need to focus on building a unique service catalog to standout in the MSP marketplace ahead of their competition.
Collaboration also allows MSPs to label tools and services as their own and leave the heavy lifting tasks of managing and creating tools to CMPs. Collaborations with CMPs also equips MSPs with various Go-To-Market strategies overnight and strengthen their portfolio along the same lines. One of the most coveted tags for an MSP is entering the partner programs of OEMs. AWS and Microsoft Azure already offer such programs, and CMPs can help MSPs acquire that coveted tag along with guidance for audit clearance.
Conclusion
Collaboration will act as the next step in the ladder of success for MSPs in the current scenario. The increasing competition in the sector mandates that MSPs move away from providing mere basic services to delivering value propositions to customers. While predicting the future is near impossible, one can easily say that cloud services will remain at the front and center for the coming times. This rise in cloud consumption will indeed need efficient, intelligent, and automated management.
Hence, it is imperative that MSPs strike the right kind of partnerships with cloud management platforms. Centilytics — an intelligent CMP — has dedicated partner programs targeted at specifically addressing the pain points faced by a modern MSP. From providing innovative solutions to focusing on an MSP’s customer engagement and revenue streams to guaranteed OEM audit clearance, Centilytics has MSPs covered. Click here to get a demo of Centilytics’ partner program today.