One of my favorite things to do is to sit around and dream about the future of the managed services industry - what challenges and opportunities we will face, and what we will become.
Josh and I had the opportunity to spend some time doing that this last Friday afternoon, and I think we came away with a some insights that are worth sharing.
I’m sure that anyone reading this is aware that the MSP industry is going through some major changes - again. Five years ago Everon was an early pioneer of what is now the common model of managed services for the SMB market. Our model represented a major shift that is still happening today, but it has definitely gained acceptance and is quickly becoming the standard.
But just like you should expect in an industry that deals with technology, the next shift is happening before the last one is even complete! Straps on your helmets and get ready for a ride!
Before we go any further, I think I should make it clear that I subscribe to Microsoft’s vision of Software + Services. I think a ton is going to be delivered as a hosted service, and I think a ton will still be done on-premise - and service will be necessary to tie it all together.
So as Josh and I were pontificating the future of Everon and the marketplace, it occurred to me that the future will hold three distinctly different types of customers, and that anyone who is going to survive in the marketplace will need to clearly serve at least one of these customer types.
The first is the customer that has fairly simple needs and can leverage as much of the inexpensive, shared hosted IT services that are available or will be available soon. These customers will use Google docs and Gmail, or some other very inexpensive or add-supported services. They will be very tough price-shoppers, and will probably not be much of customers for IT consulting or managed services, with the exception of desktop work.
The second customer has more particular technology needs, and will use a mix of shared hosted IT services and dedicated hosted IT services, and may also keep some of their infrastructure (beyond desktops) on-premise. As an example, a customer may subscribe to a hosted shared Exchange and Sharepoint service, but have a dedicated on-premise or hosted server in order to run a database that is specific to their industry.
The third customer will be a sophisticated user and buyer of technology, and might even have a technology product or service that they themselves offer to their customers. This customer will either build out and manage a complete infastructure themselves, or they will seek a hosting provider that can build and host the infrastructure for them; possiby outsourcing all management to the service provider as well.
Obviously the opportunities, sales and marketing approaches, and service capabilities needed to serve these customers is very different for each. Service providers of the future (whether we call them MSPs, TaaS providers, hosted IT providers, or something else that we haven’t even thought of yet!) will have to pick the type of customer they hope to serve very carefully.
The one thing that all of these customers has in common is that they are going to expect much of their technology to be hosted and delivered as a service. This is impacting and will continue to impact our industry in a very big way, and service providers need to figure out how they strategically fit into a marketplace with this expectation.
MRC
