The new normal – being more flexible as an MSP
How do you deal with customers who need variable resources? The ones who, for part of the day, or on a cyclic basis of once per week, month, or quarter, show a spike in usage of CPU, network, or storage...
High availability – table stakes or competitive advantage?
Cloud computing has been positioned as a means of providing a highly available platform at a low price. This is true, but only to an extent. We have seen that even big platforms, such as AWS and Google Cloud Platform,...
Competing with the big guys
As an MSP, it can be a bit daunting when looking around at the competitive market. Sure, there are other MSPs your size, doing pretty much the same things as you. It’s a case of competing on a peer level...
Microservices and the need for APIs
In my last piece, I discussed how MSPs need to start moving to a microservices architecture to embrace the rise of the composite app, created by pulling together microservices from across a hybrid private/public platform. The issue with such an...
Microservices’ role in the MSP economy
To date, enterprises have worked with everything from home-grown hand-coded systems to off the shelf enterprise applications. These started off as highly focused applications, such as those looking at supply chain automation (SCA) or sales force automation (SFA), but rapidly...
How an MSP can meet its most complex needs
You may well be aware of Abraham Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’, which he created in 1943 in “A Theory of Human Motivation.” The basis of the hierarchy is that there are some basic areas an individual needs to meet to...
Your MSP doesn’t need to be the end-all be-all
As an MSP, you probably have your deep area or areas of expertise that you are rightly proud of. If you provide managed security services, then you understand security. If you provide ERP, then you will be proud of your...
OK – you’re an MSP. Now what?
MSPs have varied prospect bases. Some focus on servicing large enterprises where the effective decision maker is a technical person or group. But for the many MSPs that target small and medium enterprises (SMEs), there is often a completely different...
Email? That’s free, surely?
The task of hosting and selling email is often regarded as a thankless one. With the likes of Google mail offered as a free service and many hosting companies providing free (or massively discounted) email accounts with the hosted domain...
Overcoming obstacles with selling security
From “Insecure platforms are a threat to your business!” and “There are millions of malicious people trying to break into your systems!” to “State-sponsored security attacks are a threat to you!”, the “Chicken Little” approaches to selling security never seem...
