2020 was a disruptive year for most businesses. It’s a complex and competitive market for Managed Service Providers (MSP), but it is also full of opportunity.
In 2021, MSPs should be looking at how they’re going to capture new growth opportunities fuelled by the increase in digitalisation. They can’t simply do more of the same and expect different results. MSPs need to empower their businesses with new partnerships and provide a greater depth of services to enterprise customers.
The MSPs that explore new models and partnerships will be the ones that build new agility into their businesses. Ultimately, capturing more of their customers’ ICT spend. They need solutions that can not only add value to their enterprise customers but can also remove complexity from their operations and bring new opportunities into focus.
A Changing Connectivity Market
In the past, connectivity was simple. Large enterprises host the majority of data and applications onsite or at a nearby data centre with branch offices connected back to HQ.
Since everything important was hosted nearby, traffic from branch offices could be routed through HQ for security purposes. This slows down user access to the corporate network, but that was a minor concern.
Things have changed. Practically every organisation has adopted a form of cloud services and storage to some degree. Many have also implemented hybrid or multi-cloud strategies, connecting to several cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
- Slow or inconsistent connectivity
- Packet loss
- Security issues
- Increased cyber risk
- Poor customer/user experience
For fast-moving organisations, they operate in complex and service-oriented environments, using services and applications from a web of providers. To ensure high performance across the business, they need connectivity that are flexible, fast, easy to consume and secure.
The Challenge of Buying Connectivity
Buying connectivity can become an arduous experience if not done right. The process of leasing a direct connection to just one cloud or service provider can be highly complex and time consuming.
For example, to purchase a direct connection to a single public cloud provider, an organisation would need to:
- Identify a list of relevant network service providers to work with
- Lease a direct connection line from the cloud provider
- Manage and configure the lines and connections in-house with additional third-party tools for performance and utilisation visibility
- If the cloud is not located in a data centre where the organisation is present, it will need to establish an interconnection to one of the data centres with an ‘on-ramp’ for that cloud provider
- To connect an office location, it will need to procure a last mile connection from their data centre
READ MORE: A Simple Guide to Cloud Connectivity
Since large organisations routinely work with 10+ providers just for core services, this process becomes a huge burden at scale.
To make matters worse, most carriers and network service providers often have long lead times. This holds them back from taking on fast-moving opportunities and slows down their digital transformation.
Complexities Faced by MSPs
Data centre operators and MSPs find themselves in the position of having to evolve to survive, while enterprise customers are increasingly more demanding. The race is on to adopt and provide the latest digital solutions to avoid losing market share to competitors.
They face a whole range of challenges, including:
- Differentiating in a highly competitive market
- High cost of developing and administering infrastructure
- Lack of specialised networking expertise, or desire to invest in network
- Difficulty achieving business growth• Delivering secure connectivity solutions
Connectivity is no longer just a commodity, but rather, a business necessity for technology service providers.
MSPs need solutions that can help them add value for new and existing customers. To drive forward their digital agenda and accelerate customers’ digital transformation, they will need a single partner who can provide all of their connectivity needs to keep up with rapid growth or change. It needs to be simple too.
Infiny by EpsilonÂ
Infiny is a self-service platform that enables customers to instantly buy and deploy dedicated connectivity for digital and cloud services around the world. It delivers network-as-a-service (NaaS) for greater flexibility and scalability.
Through Infiny, customers can connect directly to Epsilon’s ecosystem of 260+ data centres with on-ramps to public clouds, internet exchanges (IX) and other network partners via scalable, private, and secure dedicated connections. The platform makes it fast and easy to buy and manage network services for connecting your services and applications with network analytics and automation.
Critically, Infiny solves the primary headache of modern networking.
It provides on-demand connectivity to critical services while cutting out the need to invest in or manage the physical infrastructure. Even better, Infiny ensures organisations will never be held back by the lack of connectivity — it enables instant requisition and implementation with agility, scalability and visibility.
For MSPs, Infiny provides a whole range of benefits, including:
White label Infiny to take advantage of the full-service capabilities with on-demand network services and private global connectivity.
