Compuquip

Recently I’ve come across a few articles from reputable sources that have unbelievable headlines. Here are my favorites:

Google: The Search Party is Over – Fortune Cover Story

Is the PC Era Coming to an End? – Inc Magazine

And the one that drove the idea for this post…

The End of Outsourcing (As We Know It) – Business Week

Reading these three headlines within two weeks of each other is mind blowing to me. Google still makes $6 billion a year, IN PROFIT, and is absolutely dominant in the technology industry. This article discusses Facebook as a threat…really? $6 billion in profit vs. reportedly none? Really?

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True 24/7 support of a network is when technical resources are available to immediately respond to issues 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As the world moves into a 24/7 operation where people are working from home and at all hours of the day and night, this brings a new challenge for us as a Managed Services provider.

How do we provide support for our clients 24 hours a day? What would it take to have someone monitoring client networks and reacting at all hours? And most importantly, how do we deliver that support at a cost effective price point of $2,500 a month for a smaller client?

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MSP Mentor, a leading blogger in the space of reporting about our industry posted a blog that there were a limited amount of Master MSPs at the recent CompTIA conference.

In my humble opinion, the Master MSPs really can’t sustain themselves in the long term and compete in the SMB space.  The bigger the MSP gets the more difficult and complex they become to work with smaller and less complex clients.  At a certain size a Master MSP has to standardize it’s offering so much that they limit “customization” because they won’t be able to scale.  That’s not the SMB space…

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Compuquip has been a Cisco Systems partner for 10 to 12 years now and when I read this week’s MSP Mentor’s post titled Cisco Systems Talks SMB Managed Services it really caught my attention.

Cisco manufacturers and sells great products and they essentially dominate the network infrastructure market (routers and switches).  They have also done a tremendous job in the Enterprise IP Telephony space battling it out with Avaya through great products and an even better marketing strategy (think product placements in “24” and “The Office”).  But will they be a successful provider in the true Small & Medium Business (SMB) market through Managed Services?

What I mean is that Cisco is traditionally a hardware player with their main focus always being about pushing product and point solutions.  With their reputation, they have been able to charge a premium for their products and develop a huge partner network that competes over the same opportunities.  Because again, they dominate the markets they are in and have therefore have more control than most manufacturers.

But how will they handle the challenge when they enter a space where the best “technology” doesn’t necessarily win?  The SMB space, specifically Managed Services customers (which is our majority) just want us to get them a working solution that keeps their business up and running and does so at a cost effective rate. Managed Services customers aren’t as focused on what brand is ‘under the hood’ as long as the car starts and gets them to where they need to go.  That’s why they contract with us…the Managed Services provider.

Cisco will certainly have to change their approach and I’m very interested to hear what they will be bringing to the table.  You can say we’re skeptical right now, but we like to know even the most major of manufacturers realizes the same thing we are seeing every month, more and more organizations are turning to Managed Services for IT Services and Support.

In the traditional IT consulting model, a client would call for support and the IT provider would send a resource, usually at an hourly rate that was dependent upon the skill of the engineer +/- any discounts provided. The way the client knew they were ‘getting what they paid for’ was because the engineer showed up and did the work. They saw him/her walk in the door and then eventually walk out the door. Take the time spent on site multiplied by the hourly rate and you have the bill. The SLA (Service Level Agreement) involved client requests for service that were satisfied by us delivering a resource within an expected time to fulfill the contract obligation.

The world of IT Services has changed completely in the past 12 to 18 months and now MSPs (Managed Service Providers) are forced to provide reports on SLAs that involve complex terms like ‘Ticket Acknowledgement’, ‘Ticket Escalation’ and ‘Average Time to Resolution’.

Sounds complicated, right? It doesn’t have to be. Most executives just want to make sure their network is working, their users are getting support, and IT is being utilized efficiently.

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