MSPs and customisable IT

Tailoring exactly what is needed for the customer is now both affordable and possible, according to Peeush Bajpai

Managed services providers (MSPs) have long relied on IT service management (ITSM) software to effectively address business challenges and pain points. However, no one size fits all, which results in MSPs paying for a range of tools they do not actually use to serve their customers.

With disruptive enterprise technology trends such as consumerisation, MSPs and IT administrators today struggle with the challenges these trends place on the IT department.

To deal with these evolving needs, service management flexibility is required to optimise resources to ensure that IT teams are not on the back foot when it comes to dealing with the latest issues.

A deeper look at the consumerisation of IT reveals that a lot of people think of it in the context of BYOD. In even the largest, most conservative businesses, employees bring their phones and tablets to work and plug into the company network, which makes them part of the IT infrastructure.

In addition to this, however, companies are buying applications that solve particular needs, whether it is an individual, a division, or a department such as HR, finance or sales.

Employees in a sales group no longer have to wait for IT teams or their MSP to approve new software and bring in a big project. They can just sign up and start downloading licences within the hour.

This can cause a big problem because it complicates the role of IT departments - whether internal or external - which are ultimately responsible for making sure that the software systems and hardware are functioning in an organisation.

This kind of rogue software buying, device use and consumerisation trend conspires against the success of IT teams.

MSPs have reached a crossroads: keep running new IT with dated strategies, or embrace a new idea around ITSM. This is where customisable IT comes into play: a "take what is needed" approach to solving end-to-end service management requirements.

What is customisable IT?
Traditionally, enterprises bought software in the form of stock keeping units (SKUs), as a throwback to the early days of packaged software. Those were the days when the Big Four in systems management ruled the industry with their monolithic enterprise software suites.

But today's enterprise is more lean and efficient, and MSPs need to adapt to keep up with these changing requirements. Enterprises and MSPs alike do not want to be weighed down with unnecessary software hanging onto the network, with much of it not being used.

MSPs also often continued to buy licences for these pieces of software to stay compliant, which ultimately was money wasted if the software was not being used.

The cloud has changed all that, allowing IT managers and MSPs to use limited budget on exactly what they want, for as long as they need, and for as many devices on the network as required.

In the same way that the app store concept has changed the way people buy mobile software, a similar "take what is needed" set-up to solve end-to-end service management requirements has emerged.

This approach means MSPs and resellers alike can tailor their offerings to meet the exact needs of their customers, with the ability to add and remove SaaS tools when required.

Large organisations want an efficient, customisable IT experience, where IT teams and MSPs can use their precious budget on exactly what is required.

Customisable IT can help MSPs take back control by focusing efforts on the specific pain points that their customers are experiencing, helping them to remain well positioned to better serve their end-user organisations in a fast-moving business environment.

Peeush Bajpai is director of professional services at Kaseya and founder of SpringPeople Software