Will there be a day when a managed service provider offers every service from the cloud? Before you answer that question consider some recent trends.
Already a few MSPs have got onto the Google/Zoho bandwagon to provide SaaS-based email and messaging tools replacing traditional packaged software from Microsoft.
Now, add the numerous hosted Exchange services, antivirus solutions, backup services, desktop management services, remote desktop services… the list goes on and on. With all of those services in mind, I wonder:
- Will future MSPs carry any hardware (other than some systems for testing purposes)?
- Will future MSPs even have their own dedicated network facility from which to operate?
- Will this new-age MSP be thin, sharp, and be willing to offer any service to anybody at competitive rates ?
Only time will tell …
Devanand is product manager, MSP Solutions, ManageEngine. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of MSPmentor.net’s 2009 Platinum sponsorship. Read all of Devanand’s guest entries here.
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We’re building that model today. Not 100% in the cloud, but moving quickly. Combine hosted servers, hosted desktop, and backend support from Zenith Infotech. We can service a lot more clients than we have today.
You will still need to have a network in place for them to access the cloud. That would be where the on-site and hardware could still come into play. I don’t think everyone will go to this model, at least not for a long time, but I think there could be a shift. It certainly opens opportunities for MSPs to expand outside of their geographic areas.
Dave Dempsey
http://www.managed-data.com
Sorry for multiple posts….
Joe,
The next logicial question would be where will MSPs add value as things shift into the cloud and hardware, OS-es, and networks become less complex and important, and the cloud platforms are supported by the SaaS providers?
Is all this money and time I’m spending on building my MSP business going into a shrinking market when I am no longer needed to support systems and applications?
I’d love to hear your take and see more discussion on this.
Also, BTW, mspmentor.net earned a spot on my link bar in IE as my number 1 MSP resource. I don’t give that space to just anyone…
Thanks,
Dave Dempsey
Managed Data
http://www.managed-data.com
Dave has asked the key question facing the future of managed services today.
On site infrastructure represents a declining part of the SMB IT budget as applications go to the cloud. However, I think we all know that these applications do not live in isolation as most SaaS/cloud vendors would have us believe, but depend on local infrastructure to complete the customer experience. As we move into more complex integrated applications the division between local infrastructure and cloud are going to become both invisible and irrelevant from the end user perspective.
Managing this much more complicated integrated environment and delivering value to the end user represents the great new opportunity for MSPs. MSP that continue to focus on managing PCs and Servers will have a very limited future in a commoditized and shrinking market.
The solution is to manage the cloud in the same way that you manage local infrastructure. This allows the MSP to see everything impacting the end customer on a single dashboard and to remediate problems across local and cloud applications and services.
Level Platforms has implemented this with Microsoft BPOS and GroupSPARK for hosted Exchange, SharePoint, etc. We currently offer best-practices monitoring policies for many hundreds of traditional products from 85 vendors and expect to see these numbers matched in a few years as we add popular SaaS and cloud applications.
Peter Sandiford
http://www.levelplatforms.com
Peter: I think the ultimate long-term challenge is for MSPs to have a single dashboard that allows them to manage multiple cloud services from a single view.
David: Sorry I didn’t reply sooner. Meetings, meetings. You are correct to point out that customers will still want network infrastructure. But I think more and more of that will be hardware as a service — leased infrastructure or true pay-as-you-go for hardware refreshes.
In the US, Verizon Broadband just introduced commercials offering a free netbook to customers who sign up for the company’s FIOS service. That’s a sign of things to come.
Near term, though, I hear about MSPs blending on premise MSFT Small Business Server sales with on-demand backup and security services. So, it’s a hybrid on premise/cloud model. And that will be around for years to come. I suspect I’m telling you what you already know.
And thanks for bookmarketing MSPmentor.net. We appreciate your readership — and your questions. Blogs are pretty darn boring without conversation.
Joe, Exactly. Within the next year or two MSPs that can see multiple cloud services as well as local infrastructure all on the same dashboard with common diagnostics, remediation, reporting etc. will be leading the market. We are already well down the road toward delivering this future to our partners. This strategy is described in detail at http://www.levelplatforms.com/News_Events/Items/news_event05140901.aspx. I apologize if this seems commercial but I think it will be helpful to people interested in more details on one approach to delivering on this future.
Peter
Peter
Peter: The only time I get upset with “commercial” comments is when people who are new to the site jump in with a sales pitch and don’t offer any perspective, context or real expertise.
In contrast, I know you’ve always tried to educate our readers about the broader MSP market, and Level Platforms’ strategy within that market. That type of commentary is why we launched MSPmentor in the first place… Thanks for reading, and weighing in.
-jp
Moving more and more towards the cloud makes all participants like the cloud providers, MSPs and end customers to be more dependent on the bandwidth to offer and access the services. This raises the following questions:
Will the bandwidth companies become dominant and start demanding premium for their service?
Can (X)aaS be viable model in coutries like India where the bandwidth costs are much higher than in the US and Europe?
Inviting your thoughts.
Thanks,
Siva
It seems it can’t ever go completely into the cloud for the MSP at the moment since there are 2 main priorities to the business client: 1) getting their apps to work and 2) getting their HW to work. There will be times when issues around their HW come up that a software based or remote mgmt type solution can’t yet solve.
But if all apps are pushed into the cloud, my first question as a business owner is how would this affect me? and my question 1a would be why should I care whether its in the cloud or not?
Stu
Stu@southernlendingsolutions.com
@A. Siva: I’m crossing my fingers and hoping strong competition drives down bandwidth costs — especially 3G wireless broadband. Am I a fool for such high hopes on low-cost bandwidth?
@StuFinancesTech: I think start-ups will be the first to go all cloud. When you don’t have legacy systems and you’re starting fresh, your natural inclination is to avoid lots of infrastructure purchases. Plus, so many start-ups are home offices strung together to form virtual offices.
This is a great read. Really makes you think. I’ve often wondered the same things. It certainly would make backup, archiving and all that jazz way more easier.
I always wonder, where are we going to store all of these hard drives? haha.
@Andy: I think all on-premise systems will ultimately have an off-premise (cloud/SaaS) backup component.
I’m teaching a community college class about I.T. for small business people. One of my sessions is to explore the possibilities with a few “ultimate office” type scenarios. I think I will add the cloud-only model as something hypothetical I can build out and see what it would look like. It will be a good exercise for me to peer into the future a little.
Thanks for the insight!
Dave
http://www.managed-data.com
@David: Be sure to check out Zoho.com as part of that exercise. An intriguing alternative to Google Apps… many college kids and businesses are hooked on Zoho.
-jp