Much like Virtual Administrator we do have a roadmap for our partners to move away from our services and build them in house. That being said I can tell you that after 4 years as a Master MSP we have never seen a partner that embraced our methodology do this.

The reason for this I believe is that our true value is we allow our partners to focus on their business (what they do best) which is generally professional services. The model works like this, the Master MSP provides all of the backend services, NOC, Help desk, the tools, and more importantly all of the process around this. The partner (MSP) provides the strategic account management (trusted advisor role), onsite support, project work and project management.

This works very well for the customer as both companies are focused on what they do best so the customer gets the best of both worlds. Also by the Master MSP handling the basic more mundane tasks the partner is able to hire more senior level employees which allows them to provide higher end professional services and often times specialize in a niche offering (SANs, Virtualization, DR, etc.).

With this model the MSP gets the best of both worlds as well. They can provide managed services and enjoy the recurring revenue stream and strong relationship it creates with their customers but they do not have to try and run two business models (professional services and managed services).

If you look at the makeup of a help desk and NOC it generally consists of 2-3 levels of technicians, starting with desktop level on up through senior level engineers. You then need to have lead technicians, shift supervisors and managers, all of which are focused on providing remote support from a central location. This is NOT the same team that can provide high end professional services.

So if an MSP does build up a large customer base leveraging managed services with the backend provided by a Master MSP, my question to them would be why would you want to bring this all in house? In my opinion they need to ask themselves these two questions. 1. Is this really what I do best? 2. Does it make economic since? I think that more often than not the answer to both questions is no.

I have just talked about the staffing components here not to mention the infrastructure required to build, maintain and support your own RMM tools. Again probably not something the partner does best, nor needs to have high end engineers spending non-billable time on.

I think that ultimately if you decide to partner with a Master MSP you are in it for the long run with them. Knowing the excellent service that Virtual Administrator provides to their partners I honestly don’t see any reason at all why an MSP would ever leave and decide to build it in their own.

Lane Smith
Do IT Smarter