What Should Managed Services Providers Do Differently in a Cloud-First, Mobile-First World?

Managed Services - On a lighter note this is the business of outsourcing your problems so don't have to deal with it. Managed services providers take care of break-fix and/or performs on-demand services and bills the customer for the time spend or activity performed. This often applies to predictable application or infrastructure environments and the user's interface to engage for such services is a self-service portal or a help-desk helpline. One of the important elements in managed services is predictability- predictability in terms of desired services and existence of standard operating procedures. This assumption influencesalmost every single parameter in which a managed service provider operates; across how managed service contracts are signed, operational efficiency, customer engagement providing solutions. The rapid emergence of cloud upsets the predictability once enjoyed by managed serviceproviders and help desks. This is in sync with the rise in consumerization of IT and users (employees of the customer's organization) having more decision-making power in terms of the devices they use, how they use it and where they use it and in the context in which they use it. When cloud operates in the back-end and a mobile in the front-end as opposed to a more traditional server in the back-end and a client in the front-end; all of a sudden we see we're playing a new game altogether. Managed services providers need to rise to the occasion and invest in new areas and re-imagine how they need to solve some of these emerging problems and tackles these new opportunities. Sales of managed service contracts - This is an industry where customers can do comparison shopping from one vendor to another, with the notionof predictability. The new-age managed service vendors need to challenge this notion as the IT landscape is evolving. The new age providers should position themselves to solve the customer's problems with a holistic view keeping in mind of cloud and mobile. In a cloud world, customers pay for what they use and how they use it, managed services providers conventionally focus on the total contract value and this is not in sync with the new paradigm of cloud spending; they should adopt their thinking to suit anannual/bi-annual contracts. This means there is frequent consideration, checkpoints, and revisions to evaluate the business value a provider brings to thecustomer. Additional business value can be brought inwhen the services provider can enhance the operating model than the conventional infrastructure model. The comparison shopping mentality of customers can be fought when the providers can position themselves as a trusted advisor to the LOB budget sponsor rather than doing an arm's length traction with the IT budget sponsor. This is the only way to get closer to providing higher business value than looked at as a mere vendor who maintains the servers or data center or whatever. We'll further explore ways to accomplish this premium status. Consulting services and sales engineering - Coupling consulting serviceswith managed service contracts will allow for a constant relationship with the customer. These consulting services are not necessarily to win more deals but to enhance the value provided on existing contracts. This is key to establishing a trusted advisor relationship. It is important that there are constantinitiatives made to explore the challenges faced by the customer outside of the managed services contract or scope. The relationship established with an intent of genuinely solving customer issues will uncover opportunities to churnhigher business value for the customer and in turn improve the operational efficiency of a provider. Identifying technical roadblocks within a customer's LOB application or IT is possible with such relationships. And, it couldbe solved by bringing inthe professional services team and perform sales engineering for the customer and thereby substantially elevating the positionas a managed servicesprovider. This deep knowledge and relationships established are intangible and invaluable thatit gets harder for another provider to replace you. Read more about being a trusted advisor here. Predictive analytics - Most service providers maintain systems that keep track of issues reported or services provided. This means there is historical data of the nature of operations. Plugging the servers or machines or data already available or logs into BigDatasystems will unlock insights and add intelligence to the existing data. Such investments will bring in competitive advantage in terms of operational efficiency and your conversations with the customers will be better because you'd know things even the customer doesn't know about their application, infrastructure or user behavior. This is something we can learn from the online advertising industry or e-commerce companies fortheir application of big data for better user tracking and tagging to give more relevant ads or products. Application of big data in managed services can go as far as predicting what server/application in whichdata center could fail and which users could get impacted beforehand and take predictive actions to resolve/avoid a system going down. The possibilities of such applications are infinite and we're only limited by our imaginationand it makes me wonder if Einstein was referring to analytics when he said "Logic will get you from A toB.Imaginationwill take you everywhere."