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Cloud Managed Services Provider Guide: A Best Practices Guide For Systems Integrators Looking To Transform Their Business
Cloud Managed Services Provider Guide: A Best Practices Guide For Systems Integrators Looking To Transform Their Business
Provider Guide
A best practices guide for Systems Integrators
looking to transform their business
Table of contents
A best-practices, business planning guide for System Integrator partners looking to grow their
practice, differentiate their services, and transform their business by providing Azure Managed
Services to their customers
This guidebook is targeted at Systems Integrators (SI) looking to transition business models and begin offering cloud managed services on Azure. In the
following pages, SIs will be provided with:
• Compelling proof that cloud managed services are a vehicle to profitability
• Learnings from partners who have found success making the transition
• Prescriptive guidance for partners looking to transform their traditional SI business models to modern cloud managed services on Azure
• Microsoft’s perspective on how the cloud managed services space will be shaped in the years to come
It was created, in part, through extensive qualitative interviews with senior executives at existing Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner
companies who have transitioned from SIs to Azure Managed Services Providers (MSP). These conversations focused on:
• The steps partners took when creating a cloud MSP practice
• The learnings they achieved in the process
• Best practices for other partners to consider when building their managed services capabilities
This guidebook serves as an expansion of the “Azure Managed Services Playbook for CSP Partners” created in 2016. This 2017 version is not intended
to replace its predecessor, but rather provide supplementary exploration of specific concepts not extensively covered in the 2016 version. It is highly
recommended that partners read the “Azure Managed Services Playbook for CSP Partners” in addition to this guidebook as the 2016 version may refer to
specific concepts not covered in this document.
The “Azure Managed Services Playbook for CSP Partners” can be found here or at aka.ms/csp-in-a-box.
Although this guidebook contains information that may be beneficial to many within your organization, the decision to transition to a new a line of
business lies with executive leadership. Thus, this guide is written for executive decision makers and leadership teams with the authority to pivot the focus
of the organization and influence the strategic direction of the business.
Furthermore, while this business planning resource contains helpful tips and tricks on building a functional cloud managed services practice, it is up to
partners to integrate their unique IP or “secret sauce” into their practice areas. Based on the anecdotal and empirical evidence contained in this document,
it is this differentiation and specialization that will contribute most to establishing a successful cloud MSP practice.
We sincerely hope that after reading this guidebook, SI partners will be inspired to build the services that customers around the world desperately need.
Enjoy!
What is a
cloud MSP?
Chapter 1 | What is a cloud MSP?
1
Gartner IT Glossary 2017
“
with cloud adoption. For SI partners, the core of transitioning to
a cloud MSP is learning to adopt a business model that revolves
around running customer workloads in the cloud.
Digital Transformation is a top-of-mind topic for many organizations around the world. IDC suggests that by 2018, 2/3 of the Global 2000 CEOs will
have digital transformation at the heart of their corporate strategy.2 Central to the promise of Digital Transformation are technical and operational
superiority, advanced services, and flexible delivery of cloud. Advanced cloud services from Azure—IoT solutions, business intelligence, and big
data and analytics—allow customers to reimagine tired business processes with never-before-seen capabilities. But customers can’t achieve
transformation without the help of partners and the cloud. Building a cloud managed services practice acts as an excellent platform by which
to have high value, Digital Transformation conversations with customers. At Microsoft, we describe these highly evolved Digital Transformation
service providers as next-generation cloud MSPs.
Security risk mitigation Security by design Continuous regulatory compliance delivery expertise
Static monitoring with fixed thresholds Dynamic monitoring with anomaly detection Proactive insight into end user experiences
“One-off,” project-based business model Continuous running of a customer’s cloud environment Recurring revenue, more focus on services, higher margins
Complex, manual change management Scale up, scale down, and move to different geolocation(s). Increased
DevOps tools and processes, CI/CD skillsets
processes developer productivity
Device-based SLAs Solution and Application-based SLAs Meet business outcomes and customer performance expectations
Emphasis on running and operating existing Expertise consulting, designing, architecting, automating,
Increased agility and optimization
environments and optimizing for the cloud
Next-generation cloud MSPs are positioned to better engage their customers, empower
their employees, optimize their business, and transform their products and services.
2
IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Digital Transformation 2016
A successful cloud MSP is a modern Microsoft Azure partner. Azure MSPs often deliver next-generation
services around migration, DevOps, automation, cloud strategy, governance, security, and cloud-native
application design. They use the best Azure features while designing solutions—be it IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS
offerings—in order to meet their customers’ demanding and unique business requirements. Essentially,
they act as a one-stop shop for their customers by providing a common support, provisioning, and
billing experience—all with a flexible PAYG business model.
Modern partners focus on differentiation, modern sales and marketing tactics, highly optimized
operations, and customer lifecycle value management.
Click here to read more about IDC’s point of view on a Modern Partner.
Why cloud
managed
services?
Chapter 2 | Why cloud managed services?
SI partners, who’ve successfully made the transition into the managed services space, understand
that customers recognize the value Azure can provide their business and are looking for partners
who can support them on their cloud journey. Customers are seeking a trusted advisor who can
help them migrate, right-size, and manage their workloads in Azure so they can capitalize on the
cloud benefits, focus resources on revenue-generating initiatives, and offload their biggest cost
centers—namely inefficient IT. An overwhelming majority of customers simply lack the expertise
to manage IaaS and PaaS offerings from hyperscale cloud providers. They need help maintaining
their workloads in the cloud and look to cloud MSPs to fill the skill gap.
But customers are also looking for In summary, cloud managed services help customers:
cloud experts who go beyond IT. They
need providers who understand their DEEPEN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
specific industry, business, regulatory, • Engage with customers, meet their needs, solidify relationships, and gain the “trusted
and compliance requirements as well. advisor” status
SI partners see this as an excellent • Empower Digital Transformation by re-envisioning customer workflows, application builds,
opportunity to move up the value and how IT services are delivered
chain, introduce recurring revenue
streams into the business, and DRIVE RECURRING REVENUE
differentiate their services. • Bill customers for managed services packages month in, month out
• Enable continuous cash flow as opposed to one-time project-based revenue streams
Partners should look at managed • Grow wallet share as customer cloud spend and service adoption grows
services on Azure as a logical expansion • Upsell additional services for net-new revenue opportunities
of their previous professional services
engagements. Instead of architecting GENERATE HIGHER MARGINS
a cloud migration for a customer and • Tap into the typical managed services gross margins (50-60%), which are higher than
walking away, SI partners who have professional services (40-50%) and resale services (10-20%)
a robust cloud managed services • Increase margins by incorporating increased scale and automation
practice can take on the management
of that new cloud deployment on UNLOCK PORTFOLIO OPPORTUNITIES
behalf of the customer. This unlocks • Diversify your managed services portfolio with Azure solutions
new opportunities for partners to build • Add new offers like cloud dev/test, business insights, born-in-the-cloud app development,
ongoing relationships with customers etc. to your practice
and generate reliable monthly cash • Serve global customers with Azure’s broad geographic presence
flow for the business. • Develop new revenue opportunities and increase margins—migration, monitoring, app
development, etc.
25%
$130B
AGR
C
$60B
2014 2018
$17B $43B MANAGED SERVICES
$42B $74B CORE INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES
$59B $117B TOTAL CLOUD AND HOSTING REVENUE
Managed services revenue for cloud services providers will grow from 17B in CY14 to $43B in CY18.
This growth rate is 60% faster than revenue from infrastructure only services.
R E V E N U E M I X F O R A N AV E R A G E C LO U D M S P T Y P I C A L M A R G I N S BY S E R V I C E M O D E L
MANAGED SERVICES
HOSTING
20%
50%
PROJECT/PROFESSIONAL
MSP
transformation
considerations
As an SI partner, there are many
things to consider before you
begin the process of establishing
your managed services practice
As SI partners contemplate the transition to a cloud
managed services model, there are five general
themes—centered around people, process, and
technology—that emerge.
Chapter 3 | MSP transformation considerations
1. Different investments
AREAS TO INVEST
• Help desk and customer service-oriented staff
• Training for solution architects and engineers
• ITSM, help desk, and monitoring tooling
• A billing portal that can charge customer based on Azure
consumption and integrates with the CSP portal
• Educating customers of the shift—marketing and sales
• 24/7 support—either in-house or via outsourced partners
• Service SLAs and customer contract restructuring
• New compensation structures for sales teams
2. Different culture
Cloud managed services is a very different business model than traditional SI services
and will require a substantial shift in thinking. As with any large-scale mindset shift,
there are a few key blockers to look out for.
First is the challenge of an ingrained workforce. As with any shift in business models
and priorities, people who are used to doing things the same way for decades may
have a difficult time accepting the new vision. It’s important that the new cloud
managed services strategy is clearly articulated and employees feel they have a clear
stake in the success of the business.
In some cases, this may force tough decisions to ensure there is the right cultural fit
within an organization that embraces this new direction. These changes are significant;
“
therefore, a successful implementation of these changes must include a high level of
attention and continuous reinforcement from leadership. This is important. Otherwise,
it can be a road made bumpy by those who resist the vision.
We had a customer who needed additional
resources, and one engineer proposed
For many partners, the mindset may also have to shift from reactive to proactive.
a hardware solution. We confronted the
Proactivity is a core calling-card of a good cloud MSP. Customers are expecting partners
engineer and the sales person saying, ‘This
to solve problems in their environment before they even know they exist. Partners who
is the perfect opportunity to spin up in
take the approach of limiting the number of tickets customers open by proactively
Azure, don’t do it again.’ That was the last
remediating problems are positioned to win in this space.
time we ever had a challenge getting our
representatives onboard with selling the
MSP model.
3. Different process
Having a clearly defined cloud methodology is key. You may have moved
a customer’s on-premises environment to Azure, but taking the next step
and managing that environment is an entirely different effort.
All in all, cloud MSP partners should build and document processes
around:
• Assessing customer requirements and designing relevant solutions
• Security and governance to ensure customer and internal
environments are protected
• Migrating customers to Azure and supporting them in the process
• Ongoing cloud operations and service management
• Cloud SLAs, customer satisfaction, and cost optimization
• Continual improvement and process optimization
• Telemetry usage and adherence
4. Different expertise
The cloud, specifically Azure, pressures partners to expand their skillsets in multiple areas such as
compute, networking, and storage, but there are also less apparent skills they must acquire.
Investments in DevOps and learning to run infrastructure as code are vital to automating customer
deployments, provisioning and de-provisioning virtual resources, ensuring quality of service (QoS) is
maintained, and enforcing compliance and security policies. Additional details on the development
investments partners must make will be explored later in this guidebook.
The ability to differentiate in the cloud managed services world also comes from developing next
generation capabilities around big data, IoT, Machine Learning, and Cognitive Services. Customers
are looking for partners who can deliver actionable insights to drive their own business forward and
help them with Digital Transformation initiatives, using the cloud as a catalyst. And they want all of
this “as services.”
Further consideration should also be given to the IT operational competencies you will need to
possess in-house. It is one thing to migrate a customer to Azure. It’s another to maintain that
deployment on an ongoing basis.
As a new MSP, you may not be able to deliver on all of this yourself. That is where the power of
“
partnerships comes in. Being a cloud MSP is really about picking the right partners. Customers
want “whole product solutions,” where they get a partner to migrate them to the cloud, manage
the deployment, make recommendations on how to optimize the environment, and develop
Do what you do best and
new solutions on top of it all. In that sense, the customers expect MSPs to be ISVs, MSPs, SIs, and
partner for the rest!
transactional partners—all at the same time. While it’s unlikely you will be able to provide all of this
to your customers yourself, tight relationships with adjacent partner business models will enable you
US-based CSP partner
to deliver what customers need.
5. Different buyers
Not only do internal transformation considerations need to be accounted for when evolving an MSP practice, external
ones do as well. Like mentioned previously, cloud managed services are a conduit to the Digital Transformation
conversation. These strategic-level conversations typically take place at higher levels within the organization and are
often a business-led discussion, as opposed to IT. It is important to remember to orient the managed services pitch
toward business outcomes as well as technical ones.
The lines between technology and business are blurring. Technology is increasingly influencing and informing business
decisions. More and more, technology is viewed as a differentiator and competitive edge, helping drive the business
forward. Technological enablement will, of course, factor heavily into the transformation equation. However, the real
charge toward Digital Transformation comes from business decision makers who want to capitalize on the benefits
it brings to the organization. Some of these benefits include agility, efficiency, talent retention, and flexibility in work
styles. This means MSPs will need to be equally comfortable and effective talking to a CMO or VP of Sales as they are
talking to a CIO or CTO.
In many cases, this will require new organizational capabilities both in sales and services teams. These teams need to be
able to relate to technical and business audiences within their customers. This doesn’t mean IT is not influential in the
decision-making process, but it does imply that a shift in audience focus may be required.
Many MSPs are also thinking in terms of industry verticals. With that focus comes the added complexity of having to
possess expert domain knowledge, understand compliance needs and vertical workflows, and most importantly, deal
with an entirely new breed of buyers. Remember, starting with existing customers is always easier than trying to land
new ones.
The other aspects of this transformation are ISV or IP provider partnerships. Many ISVs tend to focus on industry
verticals and bring deep domain subject matter expertise. By partnering with them, you can learn specific industry
trends, pain points, and transformation drivers for those customers and incorporate that into building specific offerings
for those customers in partnerships with ISVs. This is perhaps the hardest transformation point for many partners.
“
It may seem fairly obvious, but talk to customers. Gauge their appetite for
managed services. Identify their pain points and challenges when it comes
to managing cloud. Ask key questions: Customers tend to be generalists and
understaffed, so they have IT departments
• Do they have applications they are struggling to manage on their that do everything—it’s a lot to ask a limited
aging hardware platforms? amount of people.
• Do they have a formalized incident response plan in the event of a
breach? US-based CSP partner
• Do they have a disaster recovery plan in place in case of an
emergency?
• Do they have an automated way to scale up and scale down a
development environment when infrastructure resources are needed?
• Do they struggle to keep up with industry-mandated compliance
policies?
• Do they have a plan for handling vulnerabilities related to shadow IT?
• Are they optimizing their current cloud spend?
• Can IT handle traffic spikes and heavy usage peaks?
• Is there a datacenter renewal, outsourcing push, or hardware refresh
coming? What is the strategy for each of these initiatives?
• Does IT drive business development or just keep things running?
These are all probing questions that will help pinpoint customer
deficiencies and define the offer roadmap down the road. Often customers
are simply in over their heads when it comes to migrating to and managing
their deployments in Azure.
In addition, many smaller customers may not even have the resources to
support a formal IT department. Reach out to them and see if you can help.
Expect to tap into a mix of old and new customers and keep an eye out for
customers who are locked into contracts with traditional managed services
vendors. Those contracts typically run from 3-5 years and by the time they
expire, the customer may be ready for a real change.
There are also several business and IT events that result in opportunities to
pitch cloud managed services and modernize IT for the customer:
“
• Rather than renewing current outsourcing agreements or on-premises
licenses, customers may be open to modernizing their support vendors
and technologies We bet on our strong relationship with Microsoft.
We saw the fruits of [partnering with] Microsoft
DATACENTER CONSOLIDATIONS and being one of the first in the CSP domain. When
• This is an opportunity to eliminate expensive datacenters, reduce CapEx, I communicated that to any and everyone in the
and migrate customers to Azure company, they all got the feeling of ‘well, Azure is
the way to go.’
Beyond customer conversations, do outside research. Look for white space.
Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and 451 Research all have excellent resources to Netherlands-based CSP partner
determine what the cloud managed service market looks like now and in
the future.
Talk to peers who are offering managed services. See if they have come out
with any reports on cloud managed services or pertinent industry trends—
especially in your region or market. Other partners are often willing to help
and may help form partnerships where skill gaps exist.
“
• Ensure commitment the bottom up as well—executives make the call,
but it takes buy-in from everyone to be successful
Some SIs turned Azure MSPs have found success with the following activities:
• Sales incentives and contests with multipliers for multi-year agreements
• Paying higher commission rates if one-time projects have monthly
recurring revenue (MRR) services attached
• Altered payouts so that nearly all compensation is around driving
managed services while very little will be offered around traditional
professional services
• Compensation based on a percentage of customer’s Azure spend
However you decide to incentivize those who sell cloud managed services,
remember to keep them aligned to the company’s new direction and
focused on selling solutions and services that generate MRR. That may mean
considering a temporary “over investment” in compensation—especially in
the early days of your cloud managed services practice—to ensure alignment
and really incentivize your sales staff to push your new services.
The shaded cells in the table represent a configuration that would get a very basic managed services offer
off the ground. Beyond standard service bundles, partners may want to consider providing “freemium”
or promotional offers as potential “foot-in-the-door” deals. Good candidates for this include free cloud
assessments, IT health checks, or consultations. These services showcase the value you can provide to
customers while also teeing up future workstream opportunities to upsell additional offers into.
Ultimately, it’s up to the SI partner to decide how best to bundle services and sell them to customers. Some
partners choose an “a la carte” approach, some go with pre-configured bundles, and some build around
tiered support packages. While “a la carte” is still a viable pricing option for a cloud MSP practice, many
partners have found success with bundling their services and creating “SKUs” that consist of many services
together—presented as a single “product.” For more information on how cloud MSPs build and package
their services, check out the “Azure Managed Services Playbook for CSP Partners.”
Infrastructure Management
Assessment Cost
Migration Deployments Monitoring Security Support
& Planning Config Identity Automation/ Optimization
Backup & DR
Management Management DevOps
Basic
Solution infrastructure
OS updates, ARM template
Application design & Subscription management Usage and Anti-virus/
Lift and shift upgrades and Snapshotting authoring and 24/7 support
Recovery architecture management (OS, compute, spend analytics Anti-malware
patching deployment
support storage,
network)
Advanced
infrastructure
App Dev-test,
Re- Managed User access Continuous monitoring Spend Security
dependency POCs and App Password Uptime and
platforming/ Backup (Short- and RBAC integration & (basic + and usage and risk
mapping & performance resets response SLAs
Re-architecting term) management deployment firewall/DNS/ forecasting assessments
visualization testing
load balancer
etc.)
Security
Compliance Application IT Service
Migration ROI App decom- Audit log DR planning Database Custom information
and regulation life cycle and incident
analysis missioning management and DR drills monitoring invoicing and event
support Single sign management management
management
on and
Multi-factor
authentication App Web
Deployment performance Capacity application Custom
Migration Automated
Deployment operations and monitoring planning firewall control panels/
planning failover and
automation troubleshoot- and resource Encryption customer
restore Log analytics &
ing optimization and key portals
alerting
management
ALIGN TO ITIL
Another key component of a robust cloud managed services practice
is adherence to an industry-recognized IT service management (ITSM)
framework such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
ITIL serves as an excellent mechanism for partners to measure their service
delivery against a widely accepted industry standard and add credibility to
customer conversations.
“
4. Service operation
5. Continual service improvement
It will seem like you need to build the business from the ground up, but
that is not likely the case. Many SI partners have taken their in-house
expertise and applied that to the managed services space. In fact, many of
them parlayed that expertise into their unique differentiators as an MSP.
Whatever your core competencies are, look for ways to extend those
strengths into your cloud managed services practice.
There is also a lot of integration work that goes into making the
monitoring tools, reporting dashboards, and ticketing systems all “talk” to
one another. Connecting APIs and building IP around integrated systems is
beyond the ken of typical IT operations folks. From a tooling perspective,
developers can bring all the disparate tools together to provide the best
“
experience for customers and increase efficiencies internally. This is why
solid developers are so vital.
“
• Intro to DevOps
• Infra as Code
• Automating Azure Workloads
Investing in skills—PowerShell, Azure
• Azure Security and Compliance
automation, and security were money
• Azure Skills Initiative MooCs
well spent.
• Gold and Silver competencies also come in handy and add a lot of
credibility to customer conversations
Australia-based CSP partner
However, SI partners shouldn’t feel like they have to build every capability
in-house. Partnerships are often a superior way to fill skill gaps and provide
the best possible service to customers as it minimizes the learning curve.
For more information on forming strategic partnerships, check out the
“Form the right partnerships” section in this document.
EVALUATE TOOLS
SUPPORT
Once you’ve determined the right tools to invest in, it comes time
to compare. While we will not cover the tooling conversation Configuration management
in detail here, it is worthy to note that partners recommend Azure Resource Manager Azure Automation DCS
selecting solution providers who offer tool licenses that align to
Operations Management Suite – Automation and Control
your organization’s pricing model. For example, if you charge
customers per their Azure consumption, ensure the license you Automation/DevOps
pay for the firewall technology is based on a pay-per-consumption
Azure Resource Manager Azure Automation
basis. That way, you can pass the costs on to the end customer
and simplify the billing process for all parties, without having to Azure Quickstart Templates
Here is a sample of some of the Microsoft tooling to leverage Azure Backup Azure Site Recovery
when building a cloud managed services offering. Please note that Azure Traffic Manager
this table is not exhaustive.
ID and access management
Azure Active Directory Azure Multi-Factor Authentication
Cloud monitoring
Operations Management Suite Azure Application Insights
DEPLOYMENT
Azure Log Analytics System Center Operations Manager
Assessments
VM Readiness Assessment Tool Operations Management Suite – Service Map Azure Advisor Peek
Migrations Security
Azure Site Recovery Azure Solution Architectures Azure Security Center Operations Management Suite
DEPLOYMENT Splunk
Migrations Security
CloudEndure Live Migration Risc Networks
Alert Logic Barracuda NextGen Firewall
Corent SurPaaS ATAData ATAVision TrendMicro Deep Security
Cloudamize Racemi
Ticket Management (ITSM)
Service Now
SUPPORT
Configuration management
BILLING AND PRICING
Puppet Enterprise Ansible Tower
Cloud management panels
Chef Automate
CloudCheckr RightScale
Automation/DevOps
CloudHealth Cloudyn
Chef Automate
For example, many partners work with 24/7 help desk outsourcers to
establish a “follow the sun” support mindset and meet the needs of
customers in disparate geographies.
Building an MSP practice will require significant effort in terms of time and money. Be sure to leverage existing revenue streams as cash cows to help
cover the costs of standing up the managed service business. Here is an estimated breakdown of the financial investment required to establish a
minimally viable practice:
TOTAL INVESTMENT
13 months to break even
$1.1 - 1.5 MILLION
20 MONTHS
TRAINING MARKETING SOFTWARE TOOLS STAFFING TO PROFITABILITY
$800 - $1,000 $8,000 - $12,000 $50,000 - $60,000 6 - 10 staff
per year per year per year 13 MONTHS
TO BREAK EVEN
7 MONTHS
TO LAUNCH
The numbers on this page represent the cost to set up a minimally-viable MSP practice that can support 5-10 mid-
sized production customers at launch. The numbers are representative for an organization with US based employees.
This information should be used for illustrative and educational purposes only.
Continuous learning is the key to success. With new services from Azure—seemingly launching daily—it is
imperative that partner teams keep a pulse on what’s coming. This requires a close relationship between your
engineering teams and Microsoft. Hook into trainings as often as you can and consider having dedicated
resources that are specifically built to say on top of new technologies. If possible, dedicate resources to building
relationships with Microsoft product teams. They will have a firm grasp on relevant caveats, the product
roadmap, etc. This will also enable you to provide feedback on the product lifecycle, creating better solutions and
experiences for all.
Microsoft is likely not the only solution provider your organization will utilize. Ensure you are staying up to speed
on 3rd-party vendor trainings and look for ways to better integrate those tools into existing Azure technologies.
Establish an internal SharePoint where engineers can collaborate and communicate. If a customer issue arises, it
may be critical to crowdsource the fix so that you can get the customer back to green as soon as possible.
Stand up an ITSM knowledge base and learn from customer tickets. If you find there are recurring incidents and
problems, automate those issues out of the business.
Learn from customers and measure against customer satisfaction (CSAT). As a service provider, good service
should be your mantra.
Figure out what matters most to customers and to your business. From there, establish the right key performance
indicators (KPI) to measure your organization against that definition of success.
And remember, as you continue to learn and mature your services, be sure to develop a documented and well-
structured process for ensuring continued learning across your organization. This push needs to come from
leadership, but should be a value that extends to every part of the business. Continuous learning and evolution of
a cloud MSP’s knowledge base is paramount for a successful practice.
7. Get certified
It is also worth noting that Microsoft has the most compliance accreditations of
any major public cloud player. Partners automatically inherit this credibility for any
customer workloads running in Azure through their partnership with Microsoft.
Check out Microsoft’s Trust Center to learn how you can pass this peace of mind on to
your customers.
8. Go to market
You’ve assessed the market and identified your niche. You’ve determined what investments to
make to build an offer. You crunched the numbers and set the price. You build a mechanism
for continuous learning and improvement. You’ve added credibility to your practice through
compliance accreditations and certifications. Now, it’s time to enable the salesforce and bring it
all to market.
• 49% of partners work with other channel partners in an effort to offer a more complete
solution, an IDC study concludes. IDC recommends having a dedicated salesforce trained in
consultative selling.
Remember, a new practice means that only a small portion of your marketing assets can be
leveraged moving forward. After developing your offer, you’ll need to reinvent your value
proposition for any go-to-market (GTM) efforts as part of your cloud MSP marketing engine.
Many SI partners will need to implement 180-degree changes to their marketing and sales
muscles. Furthermore, in addition to clearly promoting your added value as a cloud MSP, your
marketing materials will need to align closely to Azure, making sure to mention not only your
value proposition but also the value of Azure’s industry-leading cloud platform.
The marketing and sales enablement activities begin before the offer
is formally launched in the market. Below is a checklist comprising
common marketing/sales enablement practices that often come
before or accompany a wide, public market launch:
PRODUCT MARKETING
• Identify customer and buyer personas
• Define value prop, messaging, and positioning for each persona
• Outline core offer for each persona
• Create pricing structure
• Build a customer-facing pitch deck
LAUNCH PLANNING
• Create your digital assets—website copy and design, landing pages, offer pages,
pricing, testimonials, call to action
• Engage in search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)
• Market via social media platforms such as LinkedIn to promote thought leadership
“ Microsoft got us in contact
with a technology marketing
firm in the Netherlands to
and leverage contacts help us workout a new web-
• Write blogs and white papers site, new leaflets, new market-
• Generate press releases
ing materials, new marketing
• Host a launch event and conferences
campaigns, all fully based on
POST-LAUNCH DEMAND GENERATION being an MSP.
• Create banner ads
Netherlands-based CSP partner
• Engage in Tele-sales campaigns
• Host webinars
• Begin email campaigns
• Attend industry roadshows and conferences
• Document customers case studies and success stories
But don’t stop your marketing activities here. Become a thought leader. Don’t
spend all your time talking about yourself to customers. Create engaging content
that isn’t a sales pitch. This will establish credibility, position you as a market leader,
and improve your standing as a trusted advisor. Some partners create podcasts.
Some partners draft magazines and eBooks. Whatever your flavor, ensure it’s
unique. This will help you stand out amongst the crowd and demonstrate your
expertise to the buyers who matter.
If in doubt, always reach out to Microsoft. We are here to help our partners
wherever possible on this cloud managed services journey.