MSPmentor’s 2012 Platinum Sponsors contribute timely insights through our guest blogging system. Our guest bloggers avoid the temptation to give you sales pitches, and instead share key observations to help you evolve, build and grow your managed services practices.
Last week was a pretty interesting time in the channel and, as usual, much of the interesting news was announced at SMB Nation. Some of it was made publicly, and some of it was not. What were some of the interesting trends — and the potential implications for MSPs? Read on.
Over the past few years we have seen significant growth in MSP activity, fueled by continued emphasis on outsourcing by enterprises, increased adoption of IT infrastructure services, and emergence of specialized software service providers. In contrast, the overall global economic picture has recently become less rosy, given postponement of investments by organizations in light of uncertainty, the curtailment of spending by governments to reign in spiraling deficits, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, and the gloomy consumer sentiment in the US. Should MSPs be concerned?
Innovation drives the technology industry — and your business. But when you’re developing new cloud services and managed services, you’ve got to carefully weigh a range of factors. “Battles are won or lost even before they are fought,” goes an old saying. The success or failure of a new cloud service or managed service is quite predictable through certain parameters. Here are a few factors that affect the success or failure of your original ideas.
As a managed IT services provider, it’s important for your team to have strategic consulting skills and effective processes, which ultimately lift sales. Think about the following words: Proficiency. Expertise. Talent. Skill. Art. Knowledge is power. Working with the most knowledgeable and talented people on the planet is a great way to relieve stress, move your business forward, and sleep well at night. As a business owner, working with experts whose expertise and integrity you trust is a truly magical experience. Check the box, move on to the next problem. These guys have my back.
All the talk about the cloud over the past couple of years has obscured managed services to some extent. However, the managed services market remains in high-growth mode, and MSPs looking to increase revenues should be working hard to recruit new customers. But you’re going to need to do some education along the way.
If you had a job where you had to report to — gasp, a boss — you would manage that relationship, doing what we in corporate America call “managing up.” You’d make sure that you knew what your boss thought and what affected her decision to give you a raise. You’d also make sure you could do everything within your power to make your boss’ job easier so that you were considered a valuable asset to both your manager and the company. As an MSP, you must manage up, too. Here’s how.
Compared to a lot of businesses, Nimsoft (my employer) is in a unique position in that we sell to two core markets, with hundreds of enterprise customers and hundreds of MSP customers. Over the course of my eight years with the company, I’ve worked quite a bit with executives in both markets, and that vantage point has helped me gain some insights into what makes a successful MSP/client relationship.
MSPs by and large fared well after the 2008 banking crisis that sent the economy into a dive. Many customers saw managed services as way to control IT costs at a time they needed to tighten budgets. As the economy potentially heads for another slide, you have to wonder what the effect will be on providers of managed services and cloud services. Presumably, since clients have become dependent on remote monitoring and management to keep their daily operations running smoothly, you wouldn’t expect MSPs to suffer terribly from the second half of a double-dip recession.
Successful selling requires an understanding of the buyer’s mind, and most MSPs fail to develop a clear understanding of their customer’s true needs. Specifically, many MSPs don’t understand why buyers do — or don’t — buy from them. Great businesses take the time to understand their buyer’s psyche. Let’s delve a little deeper.
Welcome to Part III of the series, The ABC’s of Managed Services, focused on B for Backup, including cloud backup and online backup services. As some of you undoubtedly know, I work for Intronis. This blog, however, is more about building a backup and disaster recovery practice, and less about the specific tools you use to get there.
Selling isn’t easy. However, if you adopt a systematic approach, support new technologies, and offer best-of-the-class services, you can really accelerate your sales. The following five points provide insights into such things and help you win new customers.
If you haven’t been following the debate on BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – you soon will. The debate was inspired by the proliferation of $300 netbooks four years ago. Managed service providers were successful, for the most part, in keeping those consumer devices off the corporate network due to lack of security, manageability as well as raw horsepower.
There are a lot of acronyms in our world: MSP, SMB, SOHO, VM, RAM, ROM, LMNOP. (Heh, I’m just making sure you’re paying attention on that last one.) The whole acronym world salad gets a little crazy sometimes. At Intel, too, someone is always tossing out some new acronym that is supposed to be better and faster than just speaking in plain sentences.
If there weren’t already enough reasons to embrace ITIL (the Information Technology Infrastructure Library), here’s one more to add to the list: Over the past few years, I’ve heard about all kinds of benefits MSPs gain by aligning their service desk operations with ITIL. That includes improved operational efficiency, optimized service levels that fuel better market traction, and the list does go on.
Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.” Whether the impetus for change is driven internally, or imposed on organizations by external factors, the reality is that business organizations are constantly changing and evolving. This includes Managed Service Providers (MSPs) as well. Whether the transformation is at a macro or micro level, the IT infrastructure will invariably be impacted given the critical role IT plays in enabling and executing business processes today.
Do your customers know what the cloud is? Chances are they have some vague ideas about cloud computing, but if you pressed them on how the cloud fits into their IT needs, most would stumble.
We haven’t quite left the hype stage of cloud computing yet, which means fear and confusion still weigh disproportionately on decisions of whether to jump on the cloud. For IT service providers, the fear and confusion present opportunities to educate end customers as providers take on the role of cloud services aggregators. In fact, I would argue that education is a key element in any business plan to build a cloud aggregation business. For one thing, providers need to educate themselves on available options and strategies. Only then can they truly guide their customers through the morass of cloud-related options, pitfalls and opportunities. But first, what is a “cloud aggregator?”
Last month we talked about what I consider the three foundational elements of a successful MSP business. A is for Availability, and last month I composed a list of questions that MSPs and aspiring MSPs might want to consider as they build and grow their MSP practice. So this month, let’s dig deeper into the tactics associated with trying to achieve 100% uptime at your customer’s site with my special guest, MJ Shoer, founder and President of Jenaly Technology Group.
When it comes to profitably scaling a service provider business, there are two key requirements: First, delivering effective customer service that leads to more and more happy customers. Second, establishing the operational processes that enable this level of service, while boosting the efficiency and productivity of staff.
For sure, the “cringe” word right now in cloud computing is outage. In the past few weeks, a few big ones have generated a lot of public noise, both for the inconvenience they caused online users and the questions they generated for the large companies involved.
I’m not afraid to admit it – especially here – I love Star Trek. It goes along with loving technology, don’t you think? One of my favorite scenes happens in the 1986 movie “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” when Scotty, the engineer, picks up a mouse and speaks into it. “Computer,” he says in his thick Scottish brogue. “Computer?”
On June 8th, hundreds of enterprises and service providers participated in a 24-hour, large-scale “test flight” of IPv6 technology. The event was coined as World IPv6 Day, and was organized by the Internet Society. The purpose of the event was to energize, educate and motivate organizations across the IT and communications industry to prepare their services for IPv6 to enable a successful migration as IPv4 addresses begin running out.
If you’re like me, you were a great technician who decided to start your own business. As your company grew, you learned to be a good leader by being the best engineer your company. But sales? In order to be a good sales leader, you have to embrace sales and drive the adherence to a sales process. Not easy when you’re a techie at heart.
