Is Commoditization Coming For Managed Services?

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The traditional aim of broadline distribution has always been to help broaden access to certain technologies, and the Ingram Micro Seismic Virtual Services Warehouse program continues this tradition.

As its name suggests, Seismic hopes to shake up assumptions about managed services and minimize the barriers to entry for smaller solution providers that might not have the financial wherewithal to build out remote monitoring and management capabilities themselves.

But Ingram can't do it alone. Nor should it. The distributor popped up again this week as a founding partner of MSP Partners, which appears to be backed by all sorts of vendors targeting MSPs and solution providers with managed services offerings. Other founding members include Cisco Systems, Intel, Level Platforms and Microsoft.

Initially, at least, the group is intended to be an educational resource for managed service providers and for solution providers that are trying to add managed services offerings to their traditional practice. It promises to provide case studies and also research and education from CRN sister organization, the Institute for Partner Education and Development.

Certainly, this sort of effort is necessary to help get the MSP movement kick started. But I can't help but notice who ISN'T backing the organization: not one high-profile managed service provider. At the very least, some cooperation between this organization and the long-standing MSP Alliance (a professional association for managed service providers) is a must.

Moreover, it would be great to see someone work toward shaping a vendor-neutral MSP certification program that holds up some best practices in the way that certain tasks are handled. Maybe this is a job for ITIL (aka the IT Infrastructure Library)? Has anyone thought of reaching out?

I know that N-Able Technologies, the big managed services provider whose name is conspicuously absent from the MSP Partners initiative, is looking to support such a program. And yes, it advocates a vendor-neutral approach even as it looks from ways to build out its own ecosystem through efforts such Ready For N-Able, a set of APIs that let software developers hook add-on tools into the N-Able platforms.

Look for some news on the MSP certification front later this spring. Meanwhile, as an exercise, you might want to take N-Able's latest MSP readiness test.

One last thought: Despite the headline of this blog, we're still a long way from managed services commoditization, but homogenization is another story.

If you're a solution provider simply looking to automate some things you already do, the Ingram Seismic program might be a great approach for you. But if you want to be a "true" managed services provider, there needs to be something unique about your approach that speaks to your customers' IT pain points. That, after all, is what defines the V in VAR.

What's your opinion about managed services? Add your comments to our forum OR e-mail me at [email protected]. Heck, why not do both?