Opinion: For the managed services market to evolve, a more open appraoch to delivering the services is necessary.
As the marketplace around managed services continues to evolve, one of the discoveries solution providers will make is that they will need a more open approach to delivering those services.
Two primary factors will drive that need. The first is the simple fact that not all solution providers can be all things to all customers. As a result, they will need to partner with other MSPs (managed services providers), and those partnerships cannot be limited to MSPs that happen to be running the same managed services platform.
The second factor is the diversity of the MSP community, which will require integration with services provided by vendors, telecommunication companies, national resellers and retail chains. And try as they might, solution providers are not going to be able to dictate terms to business entities that are typically 10 to 20 times their size.
Someday, standards organizations such as OASIS or the World Wide Web Consortium will complete the work needed to truly integrate any managed service with another, but in the meantime, solution providers would be well-advised to look for approaches to managed services that give them the most amount of flexibility.
For example, Level Platforms is now touting a collaboration framework that allows any existing service to be incorporated into its network via a Web service protocol adopted by Level Platforms. Similarly, Ensim has made its open managed services platform available to channel partners. For MSPs with a little more technical capability, there are new types of managed service frameworks from companies such as Xroads Networks that provide a core set of services upon which solution providers can build.
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Any of these approaches puts more control in the hands of the solution provider. That means MSPs using these types of platforms will be able to more easily differentiate their services from rivals that might be using managed service platforms based on closed architectures, which essentially dictate what services the solution provider can offer.
Given the growing demands of customers for services more tightly aligned with their internal business requirements, it was only a matter of time before customers began pressing solution providers for services built with their needs in mind, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach of first-generation managed services platforms. The challenge this presents to the solution provider is the requirement to build a service that appeals to one customer while still being applicable to other customers, so the solution provider can derive additional business opportunities for the required technical investment.
Ultimately, solution providers will discover the need to partner with other entities is going to propel them to be part of multiple managed service ecosystems, which means they will have to make the necessary investments to deliver services across multiple managed service platforms.
So as we enter a new era in the channel, perhaps the best course of action might be to follow the advice of Abraham Lincoln, who said at the close of another great conflict that we should go forward with malice toward none, charity to all, and, most importantly from the solution provider's perspective, firmness in the right.
Michael Vizard is editorial director of Ziff Davis Enterprise. He can be reached at michael.vizard@ziffdavisenterprise.com.
