Managed Speculation Provider: Predictions On What 2016 Holds For MSPs

By Cam Roberson, Director of the Reseller Channel for Beachhead Solutions

Providing managed IT services requires a dedicated vigilance, with careful attention paid to new solutions and new variables as the many marketplaces that a managed services provider (MSP) serves evolve and change. Navigating the oft-shifting sands of regulatory compliance across separate industries requires diligence as well — as does keeping up with new technology standards and practices. To survive and thrive as an MSP, it’s essential to anticipate changes and have an eye on the future. With this in mind, we’re dusting off the crystal ball and making some predictions — based on takeaways from our conversations with thoughtful, forward-looking MSPs we associate with — on what MSPs ought to prepare for going into 2016. (Wait, it’s almost 2016?!)

1. Expertise in regulatory compliance by vertical will become a key component of delivered services. Businesses that enlist the services of MSPs (and often possessing little internal expertise when it comes to those services) are coming to more fully rely on MSPs for advice in legal compliance matters. In some areas this is actually a sensible extension of the MSP’s duties. Take, for example, an MSP providing data security for a medical organization regulated by HIPAA. Under HIPAA rules, the MSP can be held responsible (and, gulp, even liable) if they are in possession of protected information and a data breach occurs. Therefore, it makes sense for MSPs to develop and apply expertise in compliance, as they may share the same stake — and fate — as the business they support.
   
   However, compliance rules can also manifest built-in paradoxes. Looking at HIPAA again, businesses are actually legally required to ensure that the MSPs they entrust with their data security are fully HIPAA compliant. But how can a business that hires an MSP to provide that expertise in the first place possibly know how to oversee them? Laws like HIPAA and others can more or less require MSPs to legally ensure their own deep knowledge of these regulations, demonstrating their worthiness to be hired by their issue-free reputation, or even through contractual guarantees. Achieving this is a challenge MSPs have to take on. But it’s an even bigger issue for smaller MSPs who serve customers in several different verticals, who will need to devote resources and gain expertise in each compliance area they are subject to. Look for employee and partnership recruitment to be at a premium as well, as MSPs hire to gather this expertise.
    
2. Everything that’s provided must converge. We expect to see the convergence of products and interfaces as MSPs seek to deliver the majority of their services through fewer different solutions. The pressure to do this will come both from customers (who more and more look for single providers who can supply solutions across the breadth of their particular vertical), and from the MSPs themselves (who see opportunities for better bottom-line efficiency and cost savings in more inclusive solution suites). For compliance and operational purposes as well, MSPs are finding that maintaining a large number of different tools and interfaces is simply becoming unwieldy when compared to more streamlined alternatives. Certainly, we’ll see more integration and consolidation between remote management software and professional services automation solutions, alongside ongoing mergers and acquisitions that will truncate and optimize the available options.
    
3. Data will keep spreading. Everywhere. The means of accessing data have obviously proliferated as technology progresses, from network access to PCs to mobile devices and now the cloud, where just about any device can be used as a terminal to download any data and interact with any dashboard or solution. This means that MSPs will need to become interoperability experts, both to extend the reach of their solutions across the device spectrum and to ensure the integrity and security of operations across this wide landscape of accessibility. MSPs must keenly understand where data resides in this constellation of cloud and devices, and they must be concerned with how long data ought to reside on devices before planned removal and remediation. As the connected world becomes more complicated and the location of data more abstracted, it will be the job of MSPs to make sense of it all for the businesses they serve.

They say if you’re going to ride a wave well you have to start out in front of it, and when it comes to these trends, MSPs looking to get ahead of these curves may seek out solutions in today’s marketplace that look to have the right aspects to carry them into the future. 2016 may see more MSPs moving toward these types of solutions, but there’s no reason to wait.

Cam Roberson is the director of the reseller channel for Beachhead Solutions, a company that designs cloud-managed mobile device security tools.