The public cloud is the present and the future. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who choose to embrace solution offerings without public cloud in their toolkit will be relegated to the past quicker than MySpace.
With a projected $397 billion up for grabs in 2022, it’s no wonder so many MSPs are scrambling to find a way to stay relevant. Luddites won't benefit from these tailwinds and will have to fight to serve an ever-shrinking customer base. Skeptics on the fence are rightly concerned about the shortcomings of cloud, approaching it with honest wariness. (We get it.) Just know that providing cloud solutions offers a sky full of opportunity.
So here are your first steps to remaining a Trusted Advisor in this hyperscaling world:
- Get the Certs
- Define the Customer's Needs and Goals
- Develop A Custom Solution
- Develop a Statement of Work as Partners
1) Get the Certs
Companies like udemy.com and acloudguru.com offer great training at a good price, while AWS usually offers it free. No matter which path you choose, you'll still pay a nominal fee to test and receive the certification.
With this new and ever-changing knowledge, you can confidently advise clients on the how-tos of cloud best practices.
2) Define the Customer's Needs and Goals
When a customer (new or current) has only a vague idea of their public cloud goals, MSPs will be limited to making them happy in the short-term. Without a long-term approach to these complicated challenges, they won’t have a long-term relationship to work towards achieving together. The first step to staying relevant as an advisor is ensuring that you are meeting your client's needs by listening closely and understanding.
What do they own now? How is it provisioned? Where are their gaps? Can you give them a clear roadmap or Statement of Work that outlines the improvements you can implement?
3) Design a Custom Solution
It’s important to understand how they can best leverage their public cloud investments. How will they use it? What type of workloads are best suited to their needs and budget? Is there a specific order they want to implement in various services? How can you help them make informed decisions on public cloud investments that meet their priorities?
The questions can go on forever, but answering their questions (while also alleviating their workload) will set you up for long-term success.
If it sounds like a lot of work, you’re right. Unless you use tools like ours to alleviate your frontend lift.
4) Develop a Statement of Work as Partners
When your customer is a small-to-medium-sized business, this is the way to do it right. Right?
You are the partner vying for "Trusted Advisor" status. A partner and advisor is an entity that commits its resources and skills to help another company reach their goals. They see public cloud as more than just Infrastructure on Demand; they demonstrate the strategic value via expertise in Operations and Security. You can provide this with the right skills, knowledge, tools, and supporting tech. Tenacity is here to help. We strive to be YOUR Trusted Partner.
Consider implementing Tenacity into your discovery and (SOW) Statement of Work creation processes: create tickets, remediate violations, and demonstrate compliance. As we said, the public cloud is the present and the future. With Tenacity's help, so are you.
We're really easy to work with!
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