Gregg Lalle, SVP International Sales, ConnectWise, considers how cloud adoption will create prospects for channel businesses.
Cloud adoption has advanced at a staggering rate, enabling managed service providers (MSPs) to evolve and keep pace with the market’s flexibility demands. And yet, we haven’t fully appreciated the amount of capabilities that are available in the public cloud – it’s stunning.
However, regardless of the breadth of capabilities on offer, MSPs need to offer the right customer experience in order to keep existing customers satisfied and win new ones. Technology alone is not enough. As customers demands grow, including a need for greater security, speed and reliability, a key ingredient to delivering success is to ensure that the operations and customer-facing interfaces of the MSP are tightly knit.
Successful MSPs invest time and energy in understanding exactly how customers interact with their services and then upgrading their offerings accordingly. As a result, they are initiating Value Add services that play well for customers. ConnectWise’s own research shows that these MSPs are more likely to offer on-site visits, remote management, consulting services and out-of-hours support. By moving up the value chain, they’re becoming trusted solution partners that customers rely on for the long term.
Of course, a key benefit of cloud computing is being able to access computing resources wherever users are and on whatever device they’re using. This has proved invaluable during the recent mass shift to home working. The downside is that many of the cloud environments deployed by companies are vulnerable to breaches (a recent report had this figure as high as 93%), leaving many firms at risk of a cyberattack. A new ConnectWise survey shows COVID-19 has raised new cybersecurity concerns, especially for SMBs. Three-quarters of them worry about their remote devices or remote employees being breached. The survey also found that 59% of SMBs will outsource cybersecurity in the next five years. This is the perfect time for MSPs to add cybersecurity offerings to their portfolio and have that conversation about risk to solve the most relevant problem that would impact their business.
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