Blog

Migrating from Office 365 to Office 365—especially when you want to keep the domain name—can be seen as a daunting task. When you use the right strategy and use a tool with functionality designed to...

A disheartening upward trend Nearly every day you read about a new malicious attack on computer networks of vital businesses around the world, and the attacks are not slowing down. According to...

Your sales plan won't work in a recurring revenue world for two reasons. You’ve taken your transactional-based sales plan and perhaps altered it slightly. No matter how good the mechanics of the...

Revenue, profit and cash flow are the ultimate measurements that validate how you are truly doing as a business. In this brief, I want to explore some supporting metrics that are not part of an...

The reality is that more network activity is moving to the WAN and Internet. And visibility and control of network traffic is becoming more critical. You’ve no doubt had the call from your end user...

The Cloud War?! It’s not quite as dramatic as Yoda ominously announcing the start of the Clone Wars. It's legacy vendors and distributors (who rely on channel partners for a huge amount of their...

In our first post, I talked about what CX (customer experience) can mean to different people, working on a CX strategy for your business and finally, what building a superior customer experience...

The right sales plan plays a vital role in achieving sustainable and growing revenue for any business. As an organization transitions to a recurring revenue approach, the right sales compensation...

What obstacles do value-added resellers, IT solution providers and managed service providers face? The old profit pools are shrinking, and if you’re a leading channel company you are under pressure...

If your customers are happy, it doesn’t matter whether you use the term customer satisfaction or customer loyalty to explain how they feel about your company, right? Not necessarily. These terms are...

It is traumatic to lose what once was, a loved one, a cherished pet or that great pair of blue jeans. It’s an undesired change in our lives. Many VARs, IT Solution Providers (ITSPs) and Managed...

The increasing demand for cloud services is forcing value-added resellers (VARs) and solution providers to assess their current business models and the services they provide to their clientele. Many...

Does a modern MSP have to think like a SaaS ISV? Modern MSPs are almost never SaaS ISVs! How does/must a SaaS ISV think?

Many of the old profit pools are shrinking, and if you’re a leading channel company you are under immense pressure to sustain your blended gross margin objectives. Over the years, you’ve become very...

There's no substitute for data. A lack of information about an industry, customers, competitors, or even their own organization leaves businesses navigating in the dark - a place none survive for...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed the way businesses operate, and will continue to do so. This is especially true when it comes to marketing and customer retention practices....

It’s a twelve 12-month journey to become a solid cloud service provider… With Public Cloud spend accelerating to $216B by 2020, the urgency level is rising for value added resellers (VARs), IT...

As an entrepreneur and former head of marketing at a SaaS startup that sold to one of the country’s leading MSPs, I understand the challenges of growing a technology start-up. Lack of time,...

A Prescription for a Good Night’s Sleep Whether you are a channel sales leader or on the leadership team of a VAR, ITSP, or MSP business, the prescriptive approach I’ve outlined below is both...

This shouldn’t surprise you: A recent article by Windows Central said there are more than 60 million people now using Office 365 at work. If you’re an Office 365 reseller, this is great news. It...

When a client is looking to implement new technology, it can feel like they’re being sold to from all directions. Every company with a service is eager to get their business, including yours. It can...

It's that time of year when we reflect back on the past year and look to want we want from the year ahead. While 2016 brought cloud further into enterprise applications, infrastructure and data,...

Automation is on the rise as a way to increase revenue. As an MSP, how do you drive greater automation in your services offerings? If you’re still trying to identify what to automate, ZDNet—with the...

Increase your qualified leads, new customers, partner relationships, and revenue by speaking at industry trade shows and conferences. Participation doesn't have to be expensive.

Seldom is a business worth what we think. It’s the hard truth that most VAR, ITSP, and MSP leaders fail to acknowledge, and ultimately underestimate, the disruption being caused by the increasing...

Wishing everyone a spectacular New Year! Where are IT Services Headed this Year? Do you foresee changes in cloud technology? Impacts of new technology on managed services? Advancements or setbacks...

This is part six of a six-part series on marketing essentials for IT Services Providers. Feel free to start with part one. When it comes to content, it is crucial to employ useful, informative, and...

VAR, IT Solutions Providers and Managed Service Providers On a frigid and foggy Christmas Eve, a shrewd, hard-working, good-spirited businessperson named Vincent Andrew Reseller (his friends used to...

MSP Marketing Essentials, Part 5: Deciding on the Right System This is part five of a six-part series on marketing essentials for IT Services Providers. Feel free to start with part one. Once you...

Regarding Google's Alexa-powered CoWatch, a smartwatch for Android Wear... More than just the time: Personal secretary, Now upon your wrist. Regarding Groups, Snapchat's new functionality to...

Are you making the transition from on-premises technology to cloud-first solutions? You're probably getting a lot of questions from your customers. Will you go with public or private cloud? What’s...

With a growing market share, the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to affect the way we interact, both personally and professionally. Today, people are connecting through more devices and from more...

Have you noticed how dramatically the technology world is changing? It’s now all about working with the right technology partner for today’s technology. Until very recently, we have lived many...

As a modern MSP, you've probably seen or heard the phrase "as a service" more times than you can count. Infrastructure as a Service, platform as a service, software as a service, and countless...

Most technology service professionals say they are comfortable taking two or three weeks of vacation each year. But what does that mean? Do IT professionals pack the office in their suitcase or...

Thanksgiving is officially upon us. ModernMSP staff would like to share a few things we’re thankful for this year. Let’s start with the IoT hackers. Thanks for releasing the internet back to us...

MSP Marketing Essentials, Part 2: Developing a Strategy This is part three of a six-part series on marketing essentials for IT Services Providers. Feel free to start with part one. When planning the...

The Chinese government is at it again—this time it’s passing laws and taking names (literally). Recently, in a reactionary and somewhat preemptive move to counter potential threats, the Chinese...

This is part three of a six-part series on marketing essentials for IT Services Providers. A marketing strategy must constantly evolve and adapt, according to changing market conditions. The...

IT services have fallen victim to a never-ending cycle of evolution. What was once the latest trend is now a thing of the past. Technology catalogs have been recycled and discarded in favor of...

Think of your top five clients. They don't give you headaches. They pay their bills on time. They are easy to work with. They're even willing to provide client testimonials. They are your best...

Integrated cloud services are altering the way businesses consume IT services. This is especially true for enterprises that are opting to build out cloud-as-a-service solutions rather than investing...

Follow my logic here. A close friend of mine, Bob, is a chef/partner at a very successful chain of three fairly high-end restaurants. He has been in the restaurant business his entire career. For...

For Managed Services Providers, the Internet of Things (IoT) represents an incredible opportunity for expansion and increased profitability. According to The VAR Guy, recent studies predict “IoT...

Earlier this week, we gave you a glimpse at how the Twitter verse hilariously reacted to the DDoS hack on October 21st. And while pondering the idea of life without Twitter, Reddit, Netflix, and...

A decade ago, marketing was viewed primarily as a cost center whose chief function was to support other groups inside the enterprise, particularly the IT Department. Yesterday’s marketers played a...

What is recurring revenue? Recurring revenue is the portion of a company's revenue that is highly likely to continue in the future. This revenue is predictable, stable, and can be counted on in the...

Major business changes can be a scary. For small/mid-sized businesses (SMBs), deviating from the status quo can be exceptionally worrisome. This Halloween we wanted to help explain away a few of the...

Yesterday, I had a discussion with the Chief Revenue Officer of a modern managed service provider. The company is focused on cloud migration and hybrid cloud for its clients. Its customer segment is...

Microsoft came to the rescue of companies both big and small last week with the release of its Cloud Services Due Diligence Checklist. While companies have become more aware of the benefits of...

There is a question we all need to ask our Business Deployment Manager, Chief Marketing Officer, or a Director of Sales for our SaaS organization: 'How is the Customer going to buy?' rather than,...

Despite its overwhelming popularity, many Managed Services Providers are finding that cloud computing is still being met with incredible resistance. There is a fear of change that is difficult to...

The cloud has brought about a new era for selling IT services, and it asks a lot of providers. Say it with me: caveat venditor. Okay, I don’t speak Latin either, but it means “let the seller...

Let’s face it, the VAR life has been a good one. Adding services to hardware and software sales has been a huge money-maker for a long time. So, it’s no surprise that many VARs cringe when people...

We have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that building success as a Managed Services Provider can be a challenge. But you probably knew that. The good news, though, is that...

Migrating enterprise processes to cloud services is one of the biggest technology trends of the last decade. ModernMSP previously reported “public cloud services are set to blow away original 2014...

We are witnessing something quite amazing: the unstoppable force of cloud subscriptions, meeting the immovable object of commissioned sales.  Unfortunately, somebody’s gonna lose. Which way is up?...

Information security is a multi-dimensional problem. It goes well beyond user access control to extend into areas of detection, prevention, filtering, and removal. Small and midsized businesses...

Most ModernMSPs would probably say that, after customer satisfaction, customer acquisition is their #1 priority. If your business is going to scale efficiently, you need a repeatable sales model and...

There’s one less customer argument about moving to the EU cloud, at least as far as Microsoft is concerned. Microsoft recently built two data centers in Germany, located in Frankfurt and Magdeburg....

We’ve shared a number of features recently extolling the virtues of cloud to the recurring revenue potential of the ModernMSP. But, lest you think we’re giving unfair representation to the benefits...

This is part two of a two-part interview with Raphael Köllner, a Microsoft MVP in Office Servers and Services, Windows Top Insider, MCT and Microsoft Student Partner Evangelist. Read part one....

Amazon Web Services (AWS), consistently first-to-market, has been steadfast in its pursuit of cloud dominance. Controlling roughly 30 percent of the market share, AWS has retained its consistent...

Much has been written about the role of the CIO with regard to the benefits of cloud technology, and yet, according to reports, public cloud spending today is only five percent of total IT spending....

I had a great conversation with Raphael Köllner, a Microsoft MVP in Office Servers and Services, Windows Top Insider, MCT and Microsoft Student Partner Evangelist. Raphael is a trainer and speaker...

There’s so much talk about cloud, but let’s step back for a moment to cover the basics as they relate to SMBs. Quite simply, cloud computing means that on-premises IT systems, applications, and...

When it comes to the cloud, consumers are now expecting results when making decisions about specific products and services—loyalty has become a thing of past. So what does this mean for managed...

There's no question that healthcare is a lucrative industry, but how can MSPs tap into this vertical to increase profitability? MSPmentor’s Maurice Saluan provided insight on the opportunity back in...

In case you missed it, last month Gartner published its annual Magic Quadrant on Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and here’s what we know: the leaders remain the same. Amazon Web Services...

According to GeekWire, public cloud services are “the biggest disruption in the tech market in the past 15 years—and adoption is accelerating….” Cloud computing has officially gone mainstream. Not...

Just a few short years ago, Microsoft Office 365 launched. At the time, selling the product required genuine knowledge, and migrating to the product required genuine expertise. There was significant...

If VARs aren’t talking Cloud with their customers, it doesn’t mean their customers aren’t talking about it. In a recent LinkedIn post, Shane Zide of CDW Cloud Portfolio shares a clever anecdote of...

This week Microsoft announced its acquisition of smart scheduling service, Genee. This agreement adds Microsoft to a running list of major tech players banking on the allure of Artificial...

You’ve transformed your on-premises IT solutions to the cloud. You’ve transformed your product-focused business to a recurring revenue services model. But there’s one thing left to do—transforming...

There’s no question about the power of cloud services—they enable everything from massive scalability and virtualized resources to instant provisioning and faster expansion. Businesses worldwide see...

For decades, we’ve lived in a “technology” world. You know that world—mainframes, min-computers, PC’s, laptops, networking gear, big software, PBX’s, etc.—all used to enable business. In this model,...

Nearly 10,000 users. 20 TB of data in total. Two weekends to migrate. Mission: impossible? Not for us, nor for you. Recently, our Service Engineering team had a unique opportunity: to deliver a...

If you’re like most IT Solutions Providers, you’ve been reading and hearing about the variations of cloud business models. They include the Managed Services Provider, Cloud Solutions Provider, Cloud...

Content Marketing is one of the hot topics that has become part of the language of inbound marketing. It’s essentially a process of using targeted, engaging content to drive your audience to take a...

In a recent article, I mentioned the importance of the ModernMSP focusing on delivering business outcomes to clients. "Business outcomes" is a fairly new concept in the traditional IT world, most...

In a previous post, we provided a primer for the ModernMSP on the Cost of Customer Acquisition, or COC (often referred to as COA by executives and investors in recurring revenue businesses). In that...

While many IT services providers and their customers - particularly small businesses - are seeing the value of the cloud, some are holding out for a variety of reasons. Some of the common reasons I...

As businesspeople, we are all familiar with the age-old concept that acquiring new customers is many times more expensive than retaining existing customers (by some reports five to seven times more...

Are you a trusted advisor to your customers? (You might have heard that it’s one of the hallmarks of a Modern MSP). Being a trusted advisor is about more than giving advice—it’s about knowing your...

It’s one thing to think about the future; it’s another to be living it. Now is the time to start living in it. In a recent blog, Dan Rahko of SBT Partners describes three areas of focus that make a...

If you’re not concerned about your future as an IT services provider, feel free to put your head back in the sand now. For the rest of you, there’s a reality looming that’s becoming clearer every...

A few days ago I posted a blog about being a Modern Managed Services Provider (MSP). In it I gave some insights into what a Modern MSP is (IMHO) and more importantly, its to the SMB. What I'd like...

Microsoft knows a thing or two about cloud. One of these things is that there is tremendous potential in the cloud that’s only just being realized. Sharp growth in its cloud business helped send the...

What does it take to be a Modern MSP? Other than being a wealth of tech industry knowledge, ingenuity, and a whole lot of patience; it's about being at the forefront of what's next. There needs to...

They left work late. They couldn’t decide what to wear. They couldn’t find their car keys. Many IT organizations are running late for the era of digital business, and it’s a distinct opportunity for...

It’s time to think beyond migration, according to a recent InfoWorld article. Amid the bustle of products and tools at this year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, the chatter...

Look, you can either drown in infrastructure and people, or you can accelerate time to market. That’s the message many CIOs are waking up to this year. These are the proactive CIOs—the torch-bearing...

Upselling is a crucial part of driving a successful cloud business, especially if you’re looking to build recurring revenue. As a Microsoft partner, attaching more products and services to existing...