MSP on the threshold of opportunity -
Boston-based Continuum, a channel provider only integrated management solutions managed IT services, recently held its first conference for customers, who have sold 450 participants. The company supports over 3,400 MSPs 40,000 partners serving SMEs, and monitors more than half a million terminals. CEO Michael George spoke with writer Colleen Frye on the huge opportunity MSPs must enter a of how "smartsourcing" can help to do so.
Channelpro-SMB: You said that the MSP are on the threshold of enormous opportunity
George Michael: the role of iT in any business, but now perhaps for the first time small business, is more increasingly important. The ability to operate in a non-digital way is gone ... so that the dependence of businesses to access [technology] all the time, have to work, he has adequate, became a imperative. ... We [also] have a lot of security problems, we have a new set of regulatory requirements, and a new dependency of small business owners on the data. These things all came together at once. ... The need for commercial enterprises, you can depend on that to have a professional staff that is available 24 hours a day and it's all part of this rising tide. The MSP market is the beginning of a meteoric rise in growth. If you look on the small business market today [those businesses] are terribly underserved in their IT needs. So create opportunities
ChannnelPro-SMB. But you say that the big guys are coming after this market too. Is not that diminish the possibility
George It's so MSP is not careful. All of these companies in the traditional area of IT services look SMB as the next greenfield opportunity. I think that's exciting. It validates that the opportunity is huge. The MSP has a strategic competitive advantage against the [big] guys, and what are the small business owners want someone to take care of them. ... The imperative for the MSP is to have the CEO and leadership team have enough time to go out and get enough customers so that they have the size and scale, and have enough time for their commitment to the customer is strategic.
Do not tell me you have a relationship with the CEO because you spent half an hour in his office hard drive swapping. This does not mean the kind of relationship that matters. The kind of relationship that is important when you have the time to go and talk about all the things you've avoided because you have all this continuous data protection and remote monitoring and management and everything else, and you talk of a strategic plan ... that's the kind of relationship that the MSP needs with the client.
We believe that if the MSP is well fortified now right model of a model and business outsourcing to leverage if they put their best resources on their greatest opportunity, not their biggest problem and biggest opportunity is to engage with customers on a strategic level, not make any technical FIX [then] strategic advantage they have is that they now will care about the customer at the level they want to be cared about. So they [opportunity], but they need to seize it.
Channelpro-SMB: What do you mean by PSM must SmartSource
George: There is some words that I just described about the best resources and greater opportunity. Put them on the front line of service delivery to the part of the interaction, high-value consulting. Take all other things and we outsource it smartsourcing. traditional outsourcing is generally any [scale] outsourcing. What we are doing is teasing apart the model of engagement with the client and that is the part of smart sourcing. Do not have a team of people who can do the front and the back end. Having a team of people who can do the front end and outsource the back end of it for us.
Channelpro-SMB :? Which is ideal partner MSP Continuum
George He is the one who wants to develop is ambitious, which is reflected. [That] MSP wants to grow their scale, they want a business, they want good margins, not only the margins in terms of what I buy and what I sell for, but the best partner for us includes the difference between price and cost. Some are attracted by the price of the tool, but smarter understand that it is the cost of service delivery; if they add the cost of the tool with the cost of their work to provide service delivery are those who get it. Those who are out there looking for the deal of the day is generally not a good fit for us
Channelpro-SMB :. Do you have a goal to grow the number of partners
George We are most interested in hiring with the right partner and help grow. We could double the size of our company without signing a single new partner. So I have no answer to how many new partners [we want] which is much less significant than we double our business over the next 18 months, and that's what we focus on. We enable them to exercise in the amount of more coverage with their client. We cover IT service delivery waterfront for them. So as long as we continue to do so, and as long as we continue to shoulder helping them to be successful, we do not need another partner. I am not suggesting that we do not want more partners, but our measure is not in the number of partners we sign up, it is in the number of partners we have what we do successfully.
Channelpro-SMB: Tell me about the appointment and how an MSP Elite partner gets a pin.
George There is a service level of care called Elite Care server. It is better coverage than anyone could provide their customers with their own technicians based here on the floor of the United States because it is a massive amount of proactive care on this server. It is financially impossible to do with people not in India, and that is where we make out. Almost half of our partners have at least one server on Server Elite care. There were 58 [partners] present [at the customer conference] that have 100 percent of their servers on Server Elite care, and they make the most money because it is the most profitable end of the business. It increased by 100 percent in the nine months of this year; we would like it to be 150 to 200 per cent yoy growth
Channelpro-SMB :. You had a partner when becoming conference an Elite Continuum Partner immediately after your speech
George [A partner] came to me shortly after the keynote [and] said: "I want a pin Elite Partner Continuum. And I said, "I'd love to give you, but you must have 100 percent of your servers to the Server Elite care for it." He said: "I left the room and called my office and told my manager service to move all our servers to the Server Elite care immediately. Now I can have a pin? You gave examples, and I saw the economy of it "They were running trying to find him a pin
Channelpro-SMB.! Qu 'is that the roadmap for your platform
George Cloud-services based to enable our partners to have Cloud- based offerings is a theme and category, we will continue to improve and launch new products. in 2015, it will be in the backup area. obviously, timing files and sharing is one of them. [Continuum recently rolled out Sync247.] Our R1Soft [lefabricantdelogicieldesauvegardepourlesfournisseursd'hébergementWebque Continuum acquired in August ] will foundation of a lot of products in this category.
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