MSP, Is it too good to be true?
I may be the only one in the world currently with this Chicken Little view of our industry
but at the risk of incurring the wrath of Mark Crall and Amy Luby, let me point out something that seems blatantly obvious to me.
I have been involved with this industry for a very long time and have seen it go through many changes. But the current stampede to Managed Services has me very concerned that my fellow service providers are helping the big guys push them right out of the market place. Sure right now it sounds great and they are showing you how you can make so much more money by jumping on this bandwagon, but once you have all your business neatly packaged up and automated, it will not take much for the big guys to undercut you dramatically enough for you to lose the majority if not all of your client base.
All I ask is that while you listen to the sales pitches from these companies wanting to sell you the backend services, to enable you to become the MSP raking in all that dough, remember the old adage, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. Just stop and look down the road a few years at the very real possibly that the model will no longer require your participation.
Right now you are in the enviable position of trusted provider, and believe me they are full of envy, and looking for ways to replace you. The first thing they need is you putting them into the trusted position, something much easier for you to do for them, then it is for them to for themselves. Maybe that’s why they are showing you the big carrot? There is nothing like greed to motivate folks.
I am not telling you to ignore the MSP model altogether, just have your exit strategy planned out ahead of time. Which one of the big guys do you want to end up working for, Dell, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Google or maybe McDonald’s, cause all they are going to need you for, is geeksquad / firedog kind of hands on labor. It will only be these big guys left in a few years after they gobble up the Level Platform’s and Autotask’s of today along with your client base.
The sky may not be falling yet, but I am keeping my hard hat close by!
