MSP Cloud Services: Choosing the Right Cloud Service Partner for Your Managed IT Services Business

The need to transform your managed service provider (MSP) business to meet constantly changing client demands is more important than ever. Informed clients are reevaluating how technology can help them achieve their business goals. They are looking for a comprehensive, agile IT solution from a single provider that can keep up with the speed of their business. Successful MSP businesses are meeting this need by enhancing their traditional portfolio with managed cloud services.

Market research firm Research Dive reports that the global managed service market will achieve strong growth numbers during the period 2022 to 2031 as a result of the increasing adoption of cloud technology in companies around the world. Their recent Managed Services Market Report forecasts the global managed services market will surpass $205.5 billion by 2031.

Trying to go to market with a comprehensive, advanced, and secure MSP cloud services solution can take a lot of time, money, and resources.

Choosing a reputable, reliable, and skilled cloud partner to show you the way and provide the help and support you need is critical to your success.

What Your MSP Cloud Services Clients Want

Your clients are no longer interested in an MSP that simply manages email or onboards new employees. They are looking for an all-inclusive IT solution that will help them increase productivity, improve efficiency, and support growth.

They want an MSP cloud services solution that is:

Reliable and Always Available

Most businesses do not have the human resources, redundant infrastructure, or extra hardware on hand to maintain an always-on, always-available IT environment. For a cloud provider, however, that is what they do. A cloud environment delivers 24/7 availability. Redundant infrastructure resources and network connections enable businesses to eliminate downtime and lost productivity.

Nimble

Changing market demands and the need for rapid deployment mean that successful businesses must be nimble. They need to adjust on the fly: test, iterate, and test again. MSP cloud services enable an organization to create an environment outside of their network where experimentation and testing can be done.

Easily Scalable

Today’s growth goals require businesses to adjust their storage requirements, and hardware usage as needs change and volumes increase or decrease. Cloud virtualization provides the necessary flexibility to scale IT resources on-demand without the need to make a significant, upfront investment in hardware that may ultimately go unused.

Secure

Businesses now realize they do not have the expertise needed to maintain the high level of employee, data, and customer security necessary to stay ahead of the latest cyber threats. A multi-layered cloud security approach employs the highest standards, streamlines compliance, and maintains continuous network monitoring and threat prevention.

Mobile

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, employees must be able to work from anywhere at any time to be successful. MSP cloud services provide the most cost-effective means of keeping remote offices, home-bound employees, and road warriors easily accessible, communicating, and collaborating in the manner that is most productive for them.

Migration Independent

Multi-day delays are common during traditional hardware and software migration. Because you can spin up an individual cloud service or a cloud infrastructure with minimal end-user disruption, businesses can seamlessly transition to a cloud-based IT model without losing employee productivity or customer sales.

Cost-Effective

Since cloud services use a pay-as-you-go model, a business can select the services they need at any point in time. There is no need to purchase excess hardware and store it for possible future use since pre-bought hardware could already be out of date by the time it is utilized. That means the financial outlay can have a direct positive impact on achieving business objectives rather than sinking money into technology that may or may not be used. In this way, cloud computing helps to minimize supply chain management difficulties for MSPs.

Reputation and Relationship Tips for Growth With a Cloud Services Provider

As an MSP, you are an expert in managed IT services. But you don't have the time, expertise, or in-house resources to quickly develop and deploy sophisticated cloud infrastructure. You need an expert partner who not only has the cloud infrastructure already in place but can guide you as you build out your MSP services.

The cloud service partner you choose must be as committed to IT excellence, a customer-first mission, and security as you are. Their expertise, focus, and dedication will impact your clients and reflect on you.

A favorable business reputation and a good client relationship are essential to increasing the services used by your existing customers and closing new customers. Why, then, would you select just any cloud hosting partner to be by your side?

The right cloud partner should:   

Consistently Deliver a Dependable Service

Stability and always-on availability are a must. You want a quality service that presents you and your business in a positive light to your clients.The right cloud partner will maintain a top-notch infrastructure while working with you to develop cloud solutions customized to your clients’ specific requirements.

Deliver the Personal Support You Need

When your client has a question, they expect you to provide an answer immediately. That means you need to work with a cloud hosting partner that understands this requirement and is committed to your success. Your cloud partner must provide you with the same high level of support that you provide. Select a cloud hosting partner that acts as an extension of your team, giving you on-demand and direct access to engineers and subject matter experts as needed. Providing answers to you without delay enables you to answer your clients just as quickly–keeping them happy and engaged.

Make Security a Top Priority

Security is a top priority for businesses large and small. That requires you to select a cloud partner that is laser-focused on keeping your clients protected. You are entrusting your clients' most valuable assets and confidential data to a cloud hosting partner. You must be confident in their data center infrastructure, network, and storage security measures.

Help Solidify Client Relationships and Grow Your Business

Select a partner that has provided cloud services to clients like yours for quite some time and has assembled a suite of cloud services that deliver the reliability, security, and always-on availability your clients require. They should be willing to share this expertise with you, enabling you to become your clients’ trusted cloud partner.

Provide Automation at Scale

Automation is a required element for MSP scalability and ongoing growth. To eliminate manual processes and support cloud efficiencies, choose a partner that provides infrastructure-based automation capabilities, including a management portal, service usage dashboard, and billing system. This will enable your clients to control costs by evaluating their service usage on-demand and will enable you to more quickly, efficiently, and accurately bill for services and identify revenue leakage. 

Increase Revenue with In-Demand Cloud Services

The cloud provider you select should understand which services are most in-demand. If the services provided are not in high demand, you will have little success selling them to your clients. You also want to make sure these in-demand services are priced appropriately, enabling you to make a profit without requiring you to charge an exorbitant price.

Provide Compliance and Certification Measures

Helping your clients meet compliance requirements with ease is a valuable competitive differentiator.Selecting a cloud partner with compliance measures and data management protocols built into their infrastructure enables you to offer compliance certification to your clients as a standard service.

Proactively Support Your Sales Efforts

A cloud hosting provider is an expert in infrastructure and network management, the latest security measures, redundancy, and data storage options, as well as how to sell their services to potential customers. Select a partner that freely shares their technical and business expertise with you by providing white-label or co-branded sales and marketing collateral, slide decks, educational webinars, and other materials. They should be your business growth partner as well as your technology partner.

Elevate Your MSP Cloud Services With Liquid Web’s Managed Private Cloud

The addition of private cloud services to your MSP portfolio offers exceptional growth opportunities but requires a partner with deep technical expertise and your best interest as their top priorities.

The Liquid Web managed private cloud powered by VMware enables you to secure and scale your clients’ IT operations while automating and streamlining your cloud resources and infrastructure management.

We built our reputation as a trusted MSP partner on 20-years of employee excellence and exceptional cloud technology. We demonstrate our commitment to you through the comprehensive business support we provide and our commitment to your customers in our industry-leading SLA.  

To learn more about how Liquid Web’s managed private cloud can help drive new growth opportunities for your MSP, contact us or call us at 800-580-4985.