Featured Post, Managed Services

No curveballs at this year’s Spring Training for Business

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BaseballEach year, MSP Business Coach Stuart Selbst of Stuart Selbst’s Consulting plays host to some of North America’s top managed IT service providers.  This year’s event held in Scottsdale, Arizona continued on Selbst’s focus of helping managed service providers across the United States focus on their business growth, marketing, sales and business relevance.

The attendance included a number of Canadian MSP service firms. Victoria’s own Live Virtual Help Desk, Calgary’s MSP marketing firm, Ulistic and Kitchener-Waterloo MSP Reis Information Systems made the trek to warmer climates to escape the last few days of winter.

Are MSPs relevant in today’s economy?

Spring Training for Business’ main keynote, presented by The 2112 Group’s Larry Walsh, a thought leader in the VAR community touched on relevance in today’s technology world.  Walsh warned service providers not to get too hung up on Cloud Services and focus on end points.  “We have been storing data and access services online for many years, what has changed?” asked Walsh of the MSPs in attendance.

Walsh went on to share the importance of mobility and consumer computing in the enterprise.  “The iPad with virtual desktop is Apple’s path to the enterprise” stated Walsh.

It is no secret that the IT landscape is changing. Every day it appears that something new is disrupting the MSP world. How do service providers remain relevant when many of them are still trying to figure out which RMM tool or online backup service is the best?  Especially when online services, mobility and virtualization are allowing today’s business to do more things with less investment and many MSPs are stuck at go.

Healthcare and vertical marketing continue to be a hot button topic. Many service providers now understand the importance of vertical markets including the importance of becoming experts in a handful of specialized markets.  “MSPs may understand verticals, but are they going after them or choosing to remain horizontal?” stated Selbst during his presentations.

Selbst’s clients have had remarkable business growth including his top performing MSPs.  Award winners included Netology, a Stamford Computer Support firm focused on delivering IT services throughout Connecticut and CyberNET from Dallas, Texas.