While most attendees at the third annual Managed Services and Hosting summit this week in Amsterdam thought life was grand, many of them reported that the industry was being pulled in different directions.
Several surveys discussed for the first time at the event point to continuing growth in what is a maturing industry, but issues remain on customer relationship management, security and a lack of skilled resources.
In his keynote, Gartner’s Mark Paine said that Managed Services Providers were facing an increasingly complex customer set.
“The complexity of the customer buying process, with many individuals involved at various levels, has increased the length of the sales cycle to double that of customers’ expectations, though recent evidence shows it shortening again as MSPs get more sophisticated. The trust that both MSPs and customers look to achieve is possible, but IT service suppliers need to work on their authenticity. “Find out who your prospects trust and make sure they know about you”, he said.
The Barracuda MSPDay report on what MSPs think about customer relationships unveiled at the summit showed that Customer misconception was identified as a barrier by the largest group of channel partners (89 percent of the sample).
Jason Howells, international director of Barracuda MSP said this was down to a view among customers that managed services provision removes their responsibilities for their networks, security and disaster recovery.
“MSPs need to spell out the limits of their responsibilities, and the industry should work to educate its customer base on what is possible. The perceived lack of trust in MSP security was reported by more than three quarters of respondents.”
Management issues have moved from data backup to hybrid cloud management, with sponsor Datto positioning its new offerings in network management alongside disaster recovery.
