The Evolution of Managed Services Past Present and Future

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to a very special edition of MSP Business School. I'm coming to you today from Down at Comptia where I'm attending Channel Khan. If you are down here, love for you to stop by booth 1013 and say hello.

[00:00:22] But the real reason this is a very special episode is we're hitting number 200. And if you ask me when we first kicked off this podcast, if we ever thought we were going

[00:00:32] to get to that number, my simple reply would have been no way too far out in the future to even think. But really excited that we've been able to serve you as a community and bring you the

[00:00:43] best in sales, business development, account management, and obviously business overall expansion conversation for the last couple of years or a few years at this stage. And I really want to thank everybody that's been a listener and been loyal to us and shared

[00:01:00] with you how it's helped them in improving their own businesses. I want to thank you so much for joining us. The journey started back in 2020, so really we're talking four years at this point when

[00:01:14] COVID hit and my original co-founders of the podcast, Rob Rogers and Tim O'Neill from OSR Managed, you know, candidly we were also good friends and we were trying to figure out how do we stay engaged and navigate what for all of us was a very uncertain future at

[00:01:30] that point in time. Obviously the story for the MSP became very positive in COVID because remote work forces drove the work that we needed to sustain and survive. And certainly the government programs made sure that people like PPP made sure people were getting paid.

[00:01:48] But the reality is none of us knew what to navigate a day one. So we decided embark on this little podcast and we literally started the week after most of the states hit lockdown. And really it's been a staple of our worlds in the universe since that time.

[00:02:04] And what we were really trying to do when we launched this podcast was Philip Gap that we saw within the technology realm. A lot of podcasts obviously focused on service delivery, a lot of them focused on cyber security and a lot of technical resources.

[00:02:20] But there wasn't a lot that spoke to the business of being an MSP. Now there's tons of marketing podcasts out there and things like that, but they're very generalized. So we really wanted to focus and say how can we help the MSP community amplify their

[00:02:34] message make sure that they're building, you know, world class sales teams and that they're staying engaged with their customers long term so they can make that successful exit. And that's really what MSP business school became part or became at its core.

[00:02:50] And again I really want to thank Rob Rogers and Tim McNeil for helping me start this because without them, I don't think I would have been consistent to do this every week quite candidly. You know they're working with them together and working collaboratively really allowed

[00:03:06] this to take off. Allow us to make sure that we're putting forth quality content, bringing in the best guests that we could and really making sure that we're answering the questions at the MSP community was sharing on, you know, various social outlets and certainly on Reddit as well.

[00:03:21] And we hope to continue doing the same. So by no means if you're thinking oh my god is this 200 episodes in the end, by no means not like I mentioned when this podcast became something that I was doing a little

[00:03:31] bit more on my own, we absolutely want to keep this content coming to you. But now let's talk about the future. And what does the future of MSP business school hold for for all of us?

[00:03:43] Well, you know a lot of what I'd like to talk about is really the next generation of MSP. We are really closing out some cycles that we've been a part of and as many of you know especially those of you that have great hair like I have.

[00:04:00] The, you know, this is a very cyclical industry. You know when I came into it, it was largely far, box sales setting up. But also the customers a little different at that time.

[00:04:12] The managers we were speaking to back in, you know, the 90s, early 2000s were not digital natives. They didn't understand how the technology was going to benefit them. They've been doing things with pen paper and pencil and doing them successfully for a long time.

[00:04:27] And a lot of the education we were putting forth as sales teams was really educating them to why they needed these tools and how they were going to impact their business favorably for the long run.

[00:04:39] And there was a lot of education in that transfer, but it wasn't education on how to optimize like we talk about today. But really just the why? Why do I want this? What's in there?

[00:04:50] So you know when I first started this industry, a lot of money was made selling those boxes they were high margin and it was interesting times. And I've watched that evolution over the last 25 years or so.

[00:05:01] We moved into consulting and more in the embryonic times of managed services. You know, I hear a lot of folks say yeah, I got into a managed services during the early stages 2008, 2010 and believe me, not you know, I'm there with you.

[00:05:16] They were still very new and native at that point. But I actually got into managed services in 2002 where we were forced to start doing some monitoring because we ate where we're working with a vendor that was installing voice over IP systems.

[00:05:31] And they were starting to have some problems. And they had no logging to tell them why the problems were. And of course the carriers were saying it was the phone systems fault. So our managed services grew out of solving a problem on how do we understand which side

[00:05:43] of the interface these issues are happening on on the router and then how can we distill what we're learning from that and getting it moving forward. So we started monitoring routers and firewalls that turned into servers and PCs and we got

[00:05:56] to hop on the next generation of really converting project customers into managed service and getting off of that roller coaster of good month, bad month because the projects we consume us, we would do them. We would collect on them but then we'd have to go sell more.

[00:06:11] And managed services really helped us grow our business by leveling out those revenues as you all know. From there we started, you know, I joke around a lot that in the 2000s. I made a most online money just selling exchange servers and managing them.

[00:06:24] And then of course office 365 came and we all had to change an adapt again. We were on the forefront of the cloud movement. We actually started selling cloud dash tops via Citrix back in 2008 and obviously it took a while for cloud adoption to really expand out.

[00:06:42] And these are the cycles that we've all been a part of and we've all had to navigate through, especially those of you that like myself that have been really doing this since the early 2000s late 1990s.

[00:06:53] And we're really at a time of, probably reinvention for the MSP once again. Breakfix, it'll never be fully gone but basically making money off of it is a thing in the past and I think most MSPs would agree with me.

[00:07:08] Product life cycle management, it's critical but more from a patching and security standpoint versus worrying about the machines wearing out and dying in some cases. So we're seeing product life cycle shift, we've seen work loads go up to the cloud and cloud adoption really taking hold.

[00:07:26] I would argue that when COVID hit that really drove the final nail that we needed to move the final laggards into the cloud by really forcing them remote and to that workforce. And that brought the emergence of new technologies too.

[00:07:42] You know obviously with active directory and the users being shifted to the outside we needed edge security tools. We needed new identity managers. You know we certainly have been learning how password complexity is not the only answer to

[00:07:56] you securing an MFA is now a drop-dead requirement but when you look at those things it was only a few years ago we were still trying to work with our customers to get them to believe that. So where are we today?

[00:08:09] Well really we're at that next, um, cost above how things are evolving. There's been a lot of buzz around AI for the last 18, 24 months and certainly we're seeing MSPs utilizing it more so internally.

[00:08:22] But now we need to convey that use cases out to the customers and we're seeing the more progressive MSPs that we speak to daily at places like BCIO toolbox. The ones that are now building use cases for their customers to implement AI are enjoying both

[00:08:39] the opportunity and I apologize if you guys can hear that slide right in the background. But um, you know basically what's happening is it's offering them the opportunity to build new services around AI and deploy that.

[00:08:52] It's also causing more security needs to occur and I think you know as we continue to evolve I love to say all the time security never goes out of style.

[00:09:03] But here I think we're looking at the fact that security is going to take on a whole new level of concern. It's going to be more complex as we have different touch points, the human factors killer consideration as well.

[00:09:18] But I'd even argue this advanced of AI how it's being utilized as we're still understanding what that technology is about could open up security concerns that we're not aware of and it certainly opens up concerns of who's leveraging it and where your data's going

[00:09:32] and is it going into public repositories as well? So you know the AI story is going to continue to evolve by no means am I an expert but I promise we'll bring in the experts to talk about it as we continue the podcast.

[00:09:44] Security, you know obviously governance risk and compliance is very near to dear to my heart as we develop a tool for VCI OS and VCs so I was going to continue that advisory standpoint.

[00:09:55] But you all know that cyber insurer ability and making sure claims get paid is a big portion of this as well. You know when those claims get paid that is one consideration or excuse me when a claim

[00:10:07] is required a consideration is where we completely 100% I'm not going to use the word honest but true when we were filling out those compliance surveys and we're starting to see the insurance companies doing those carve outs when they're seeing areas that you weren't truly compliant.

[00:10:24] You know you may be using MFA but are you using it across the entire stack of your tools and if you're not that can be an area that they reject a claim on so we want

[00:10:35] to make sure that we're doing that and as you know we really need to become more than security participants I guess are right security executors and all the red team blue team white team conversations that are out there but really starting to be consultants

[00:10:49] helping a customer understand what a proper security framework is. One of those outcomes if they don't have the right security that they may fall into those traps like cyber insurability or increased risk of being breached or having a security event.

[00:11:07] Risk has become a big part of my conversations even the QBR landscape is changing from a report out on what we've done you know processes product lifecycle into a conversation that's born more in risk impact and likelihood of that risk and one of the steps we're going

[00:11:24] to have to take in order to tie that risk but also how can it support business outcomes? So we're really starting to see this evolution where MSPs almost have to more part into being management consultants.

[00:11:38] You're of people that are sitting in that role of communicating with your customers need to understand how businesses operate they might need to understand how a P&L operate so they can really get into better more expanded budget conversations with their clients and

[00:11:53] then they need to tie this all together and be able to show those different stakeholders within the business, your line of business managers who might just be influencers on a project. Those decision makers and influencers that live in the C-suite how these objectives are not

[00:12:09] only going to improve security but also foster better outcomes and that's a skill that we have to work on as an MSP community to have those conversations and that's really what drives value

[00:12:20] within that relationship and you know other things that we're going to have to continue to explore with our customers from a forward facing as the MSP perspective is that continual life cycle

[00:12:32] battle and keeping people on the mark with what they need to do to continue to evolve as a business. I think we need to be engaging more with our line of business services and seeing where we can

[00:12:42] automate and these are things that that next generation of MSPs is really going to have to share with their clients. So we will continue to bring on experts that are going to speak to those types

[00:12:53] of things and then bring on experts to go back to our core too. I don't want people to think, well the podcast is changing. Now these are all topics that we've been talking about for a long

[00:13:03] time but now we want to you know augment that within how do we market this stuff? How do we hit the market? Customer acquisition is one of the biggest challenges I hear repeatedly over and over for MSPs

[00:13:14] and we're going to continue to bring on those sales professionals to bring that voice that Robin Timbrot for us for a long time really helping you know okay great this is all theory here

[00:13:25] the steps to actually execute and take action and really win with your customers or with your customers and prospects and we're going to bring on those marketing people to show you shortcuts how can you do

[00:13:37] this? How can you leverage AI to potentially build a campaign get it out of the door much quicker? So I'm very excited about what the future is going to bring. The last 200 episodes have been amazing to be a part of

[00:13:49] I still can't get over the fact that people come up to be at a conference and you know tell me more about listening to the podcast than what we do over a VCO toolbox and that's great because that means

[00:13:59] we're doing our part as a servant to the community to bringing you valuable content so you can do your business and not just being an infomercial or a pitch in these podcast sessions. I want to hear

[00:14:11] from you too. We only get better from hearing from our listeners and I want to hear about what topics or what people you'd like us to bring out of the podcast you know we do this hopefully for you

[00:14:24] hopefully you all derive value and and we want to make sure that we're bringing the right guests on that you want to learn more from so please please please please reach out you can do that on our Facebook

[00:14:35] page we do have an MSP Business School Facebook page on our LinkedIn page those are probably the best two avenues to you know drop a DM and let us know what you'd like to hear if you want to email

[00:14:46] me directly I'm very open about my email address hit me up a bead oil at bcio toolbox.com DM me directly on LinkedIn and if we want to have more people come on that you want to hear

[00:14:59] and we want to hear from more of you I want to make a focus to bring more MSPs back onto this platform as well you know it's very easy for me to get my vendor buddy is to show up

[00:15:11] but we really want the MSPs to tell the story and we know those are the stories that you most want to hear as well as as that community really is living which you're experiencing on the day

[00:15:23] today so again I really want to thank all of you for being a big part of this journey with me we're going to continue to expand on that we may even have some new things coming up outside

[00:15:33] the scope of what I've talked over the next six months as well but you know I really want to thank those of you that have been avid listeners for allowing us to be a part of your world for the last

[00:15:44] you know four years I don't take for granted that there's tons of options of things to listen to or bombard it with media every day and I really am thankful and grateful for those that

[00:15:55] have allowed MSP Business School to be part of their world whether it's via YouTube or via our podcast on those different platforms you know we do this because we love to do it and we do this because

[00:16:07] we're passionate about the sales account management and being an MSP and being part of the community that serves people and that serve in mentalities what's really driving me here to do our best

[00:16:19] on each and every podcast so I want to thank you all again for joining me today if you are at compt and you do hear this podcast before you leave love free to stop by say hi and tell me

[00:16:32] what you love about the podcast and what you don't like if there are things that you'd like us to do less of again I'm over at box 1013 with VCO toolbox and next week we've got Eric Anthony joining

[00:16:43] our podcast and he's going to share with you a lot of things that an MSP can do to really improve efficiency and optimize their processes and as he runs the all things MSP group and I really

[00:16:58] encourage you to give him a listen when he goes live next week so again thank you very much and I look forward to having more of these conversations with you if you allow us for another 200

[00:17:09] episodes take care everyone in and again I want to thank you for being a part of this journey with me