In my view it will be impossible for any but the largest of VARs to have the range of technical competencies to address the typical SMB’s requirements. That means we will see more consolidation, peer-to-peer partnerships, opportunities for the rise of highly specialized second tier support organizations for specific technologies, outsourced NOCs in India or China, and as Amy suggests continued rapid growth of the Master MSP model.

I expect it will be a combination of all of these presenting a shift to a tiered services model and the requirement for almost unlimited collaboration models. Level Platforms supports most of this already at some level including support for real time synchronized PSA and help desk software, etc. and it expanding this support is a high priority.

VoIP/UC third party management applications also offer great alternatives to vendor solutions. But as with any SaaS-type application, management is critical since the MSP needs to be able to be able to answer the question, “my phone is not working” or “the sound was not clear” and this requires end-to-end monitoring and management. My point is that without these features in an MSP platform few MSPs will embrace these opportunities and hence the absolute need for us to deliver this MSP 2.0 capability before we become barriers to the adoption of new technlogy and delivery models.

If some of that infrastructure is in the cloud and some of it is distributed and some is traditional LAN/WAN architecture, how will the existing MSP manufacturers need to change their tools to accommodate? The open architecture and integration mantra is surely relevant, and in fact critical to the success of the MSP manufacturers, but mostly importantly that integration actually has to work as advertised in order for the mature MSP to have a competitive advantage as they nurture and expand their practice today.

As MSPs mature the greatest challenge they will have is in hoping their tools mature along with them at a pace that keeps them at a competitive advantage over their local, regional, national and even worldwide competitors. Agility, responsiveness and the ability to produce the features the MSP needs is going to be critical for the MSP manufacturers today and tomorrow. I am not sure what 2010 will bring, but 2009 will be the year that the MSP tool manufacturers will have to step up and produce the features that the mature MSP needs.

Amy Luby
CEO, MSP Services Network
http://www.mspsn.com
aluby at mspsn dot com

This is perhaps one of the most lucid posts I’ve read in quite some time as it relates to the impact of an new era of computing on the channel.

Since it is neither realistic nor practical for the average MSP to thow the baby out with the bath water, the key is how the MSP will actually manage such a transition.

One critical component to the sea change will be suppliers and vendors that can effectively help the MSP maintain SLA integrity while improving overall profitability.

It would be great to have a resource for MSP’s wanting to learn about the new 2.0 concepts and services because right now it’s a mixed bag of where to go and find out information.

From a business point of view, however, I think one thing left out of this discussion is a part of MSP 2.0 I believe will also be a large winner and that is understanding how to offer solutions to businesses not just services. Solutions will help the business achieve their goals not just deal with IT.

Readers: I just wanted to point out that Katherine’s company, Nemertes Research, generates a lot of timely research related to managed services and unified communications.