INTERVIEW Mark Whitehead
“There is a huge opportunity in converting traditional PBX to Cloud and Hybrid solutions
but many telcos don’t have the in-house expertise to blend backup, security, telecoms
and connectivity in a single service. ” Mark Whitehead
From Telco to MSP
According to Datto the
average size of an EMEA
MSP is £1-5 m turnover,
well within most Telco’s
M&A budgets. Telcos are trying
to mitigate losses from decreasing
call revenues, the depreciation of
margins in Ethernet and MPLS,
and falling mobile revenues, so
buying an MSP to build and
grow could make sense.
e fall of Carillion has left
a bad tastes in the mouth of
those considering outsourcing
large contracts and given a
boost to small and midsize
IT service providers. MSPs
tend to have strong verticals
such Manufacturing, Finance
and Legal and the services
they provide like Back-up as a
Service, desk top support and
security are very sticky.
However, MSPs tend to be
less experienced at telecoms and
connectivity but very strong in
cloud-based propositions such
as Teams, Skype and Azure and
this is the market direction of
travel. MSPs also struggle with
annuity of contract, the average
in the UK is 12 months where
Telcos are great at oering long
term contracts of 3 years or
more.
ere is a huge opportunity
in converting traditional PBX
to Cloud and Hybrid solutions
but many telcos don’t have the
in-house expertise to blend
backup, security, telecoms and
connectivity in a single service.
is exposes them to the risk of
losing out to competitors who
have already invested in building
a single fully managed service
proposition.
According to Datto’s State
You may have noticed that medium and large Telcos are buying Managed Service
Providers at a rapid rate. Historically described as Managed IT Companies, MSPs are
becoming very attractive to Telcos as channel veteran Mark Whitehead explains
MSPs. In this business model,
any issues cost the MSP money
as they are billing a xed fee,
so standardisation helps keep
things consistent and helps with
sta training.
e ‘Buy and Grow’ option
takes care of a lot of the base
line work needed to provide an
MSP service whilst allowing
the acquirer to focus on adding
value in sales, marketing, service,
telecoms portfolio and increasing
contact terms. I believe this is
why it has been a very popular
route to take for Telcos as
exampled by Intercity, GCI and
Solar/Wavenet.
www.p-rd.com
of MPS 2018 report, the top
business challenges for EMEA
MSPs are marketing/sales,
stang/training, ransomware/
cyber security, and customer
service. Excluding ransomware/
cyber security, the Telcos are
generally very strong in these
areas and can add huge value to
an MSPs growth.
Build and Grow or Buy and Grow
ere are a number of
considerations to build out an
MSP business function such
as: does the business have the
right skill sets in house and
how much would it cost to
ll the gaps? How far do we
want to go with the oering;
desktop support, break x, 24hr
monitoring of apps and network?
How realistic is it that you can
achieve industry certications
such as Microsoft CSP (Cloud
Solutions Partner)? Can the
business protect its customers
for ransomware and viruses
eectively? Can outsourcing
provide some short cuts, for
example, third party break-x
companies? ere are some great
Industry bodies like COMPTIA
that will give sound advice and
support in all aspects of MPS
business.
To oer high margin
Managed Services you will need
to invest in a set of tools. At
the base level you may want to
consider Professional Services
Automation (PSA) software.
is is probably going to go
beyond any ticketing system
you may have already and also
handle contract management
as well as a lot more. On top
of this it’s vital to have real
time visibility of your client’s
infrastructure. is is where
the Remote Monitoring and
Management (RMM) software
comes in. is lets you see what
is happening and resolve issues
(ideally automatically) before the
client becomes aware.
On top of this, it’s important
to build a suite of products that
you will use to standardise your
oering. Standardisation is one
of the key traits of successful
Channel Veteran
Mark Whitehead
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22 | Comms Business Magazine | May 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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