SUCCESSFUL MSPs are like gamers: We start with lots of lives. To survive in this business, we have to fast-travel to solutions and technologies that will keep our clients relevant in the future. Xperteks has thrived by continually looking around the corner, preparing for what’s next with our own R&D, and striving to lead. We’ve been figuring out the MSP’s role in the cloud world by testing tools and solutions so when the pandemic hit, we were ready to move our clients forward with minimal or no business disruption—and now we are focused on value-add cloud services.
Xperteks has a history of pioneering. Our roots stem from serving creative agencies and marketing firms in the heart of Manhattan, which led us to develop a managed service offering for the Apple platform before there were Apple-focused tools to do so. When signs pointed to clients demanding mixed Windows-based PCs and Apple workstation environments, we quickly became experts in integrating and managing them.
We still use our service provider and reseller Apple Authorization status, which we’ve held for the past 18 years, as a differentiator to showcase our expertise as computer experts, not platform-specific technicians. Today it’s almost impossible to get Apple authorizations because of stringent geographic requirements and qualifications. We consider ourselves lucky to continue to participate in the program.
Now, as more and more businesses are looking to fully embrace cloud, we are reinventing ourselves yet again as a next-gen MSP that can guide them on their digital transformation journey. Our job is to make sure we set the stage to deliver business intelligence and visibility into their company data so management can make smarter decisions that drive toward desired outcomes that they may not have believed possible.
We’ve spent the past several years getting skilled-up with Azure, and thinking through things like: How do clients operate as a business that’s 100% in the cloud? How do we maintain that? How do we control costs? How do we use our methodology as a traditional MSP and translate that into cloud? How do we integrate with a client’s cloud applications? How do we make sure they’re secure and put advanced cybersecurity tools in place? How can we onboard and offboard them more efficiently?
Managing cloud infrastructure is completely different than managing an on-premises computing environment. It takes a new mindset to ensure you manage resources and costs in a dynamic way to match what the business actually requires. For instance, does the business need virtual machines turned on 24/7 or just during a 40-hour work week? This can get complex and requires a lot of planning to make sure the experience of cloud looks easy. As a result, we ensure clients have the right resources so they’re not overprovisioned. We also make sure our clients test and validate their environment before we roll anything out.
Currently we have clients whose businesses are operating 100% in the cloud using Azure. Our services do not end there, though. Any MSP can get you into the cloud, and everybody is headed there. What differentiates us are the value-added services that will help clients quantify and measure how the business is doing by refining data to deliver KPIs through an easy-to-comprehend dashboard. Once they see the value of us being able to provide business intelligence in a work-from-anywhere cloud environment, then we’ll start talking about how they can affect those insights and increase profitability.
That’s the tipping point that will level-up Xperteks from “maintenance crew” to strategic partner.
Whoever can deepen their trusted relationships, and become strategic, is armored to defend against the competition and gain a competitive advantage.
Xperteks FTN (For The Win).
GG (Good Game).
Player Progression
- Stay proactive. Test and play with new technology and solutions that are relevant to where you believe your clients are going. Be confident it’s the real thing before you pitch it.
- Ask why. Find out why your clients want to take a digital transformation journey. Do they need to enable remote workers long term? Do they seek operational insights?
- Provide universal business outcomes from the get-go. Set the stage by delivering analytics on productivity, profitability, etc., which will whet their appetite for innovations that advance their business.
Photo: Rod Goodman
