How Pivoting to MDR Can Transform Your Reseller Business

Ensuring offerings and business models keep pace with the rapidly changing technology landscape and evolving customer needs is a challenge for value added resellers (VARS). Relying on commoditized, one-off hardware and software purchases means revenue can be unpredictable, and profit margins are tight. And in a competitive market, they may struggle to stay afloat.

The answer? Managed services. They give resellers a way to generate reliable, recurring revenue, enjoy stronger margins, build stickiness, and stay competitive. Many VARs are transitioning to the MSP business model, particularly those delivering security services. In fact, the global managed security services market is projected to reach $67bn by 2025.

But how should VARS go about adopting a managed services model?

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a great place to start, enabling VARS to build a repeatable service model that drives long-term value and speaks to customer security needs. MDR refers to security services that combine technology and human skills to proactively monitor environments and respond to threats.

Start small

Launching full MDR capabilities from scratch is a significant undertaking, especially for VARS not currently specializing in security, and requires extensive resources and personnel. Starting simple with endpoint management services that are easy to sell and deliver is a good foundation. Further down the line, broader MDR services can be layered on top of existing offerings.

These services can then be bundled into packages that make purchasing simple and streamlined for customers.

Identify customers

Service providers must ensure they are identifying and reaching new businesses as well as existing customers who may benefit from additional layers of security.

Smaller businesses lacking the internal resources to manage security entirely in-house are looking for trusted partners to deliver round-the-clock threat protection so they can focus on other areas.

Furthermore, many organizations have industry-specific regulations requiring them to demonstrate threat detection and incident response, making MDR a good fit.

Service providers may wish to focus on organizations from a specific industry and offer tailored services that cater to a particular niche as an opportunity for differentiation.

Once customers have been identified, communicate the benefits of a service-based security model as a cost-effective way of ensuring their businesses remain protected.

Getting partnerships right

Partnering with the right MDR vendor is also key. The operational burden of ensuring customer environments remain protected can eat into margins, making adding new services risky. Instead, partnering with a proven MDR vendor allows resellers to go to market quickly and deliver enterprise-grade protection without the upfront cost or resource requirement, allowing you to focus on serving customers.

The right MDR vendor will not only have a track record in detection and response but will also offer opportunities to grow your service offerings, a wide range of capabilities that integrate well with your existing tech stack, flexible delivery models and sales, marketing, and onboarding support.

WatchGuard® Unified Security Platform® is designed to help managed service providers deliver world-class security that helps their businesses grow while also improving operational efficiency. Spanning network security and intelligence, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure Wi-Fi, WatchGuard’s products have already been adopted by more than 17,000 security resellers and service providers to protect more than 250,000 customers.

Demonstrating value

Positioning the value of your MDR services to new and existing customers is key to growing your business.

Sales teams need training on how to sell service models and how they differ from product-based revenue, and how to communicate their value to clients. Customers are looking to partners for guidance on how to improve their security posture and reassurance that their environments remain protected, so positioning your business as a central part of their security strategy is key.

With the right structure and a strong MDR partner, MDR can unlock growth for your business, revealing recurring revenue and opportunities to scale across your customer base.