I had a good trip to MSPWorld in Las Vegas and met some very interesting people. I try to come away from every conference with a few key takeaways – here are some that come to mind from this conference:
1. It’s become too easy to start a managed services business. What I mean by that is the tools necessary to offer managed services have become so cheap that everyone is jumping into the field. This is both a good and a bad thing.
The good is that anyone that wants to be an entrepreneur, can be. I’m all for entrepreneurship, so that’s encouraging. The bad is that the 1 man shop is jumping into the market and making the same promises to prospects that Everon is making, but only has 1/50th of the resources that Everon does to pull those promises off. At the same time, they are usually making these promises at prices that are 1/2 to 3/4 of Everon’s pricing.
This is bad for the industry. It’s going to confuse consumers and create bad experiences. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of these service providers really believe they are going to make this pricing work, and it will only occur to them how off they are when it’s too late.
2. There are a lot more ways to make money in this industry than most of us are taking advantage of. I had some fantastic conversations with a few people this week that really opened my eyes to some revenue opportunities. And I think I was able to open theirs to some too. The net is that we are all going to make more money in the next year!
3. The telecom providers are all really waking up to the potential of managed services, and are hungry to get in the game somehow. This could come in the form of direct competition, or it could come in the form of partnership. I don’t know about you, but I’m all for partnership!
I had the pleasure of meeting the organizers and some of the members of MSPTel.com while I was there. It was interesting to hear their take on our industry and how we can all leverage each other for success. I’ll explore this more in future posts.
MRC
