One of the lessons I learned from last week’s MSPWorld in Las Vegas was that MSPs are finally embracing the notion of partnering with other MSPs. No, this is not a new concept but it is the first time I witnessed it happening on a mass scale. Of the nearly 300 MSP executives who converged on Las Vegas last week to tackle a wide range of issues, the most commonly repeated comment was the value of working with other MSPs.
Over the years I have taken advantage of my membership in the MSP Alliance in so many ways.
Mike – thanks for your kind remarks. I have found that a lot of members have used their membership in similar fashion and it has yielded many unforeseen benefits.
Maybe you know something I don’t, but this economy is not going to turn around in the next 10 years. We have way too much debt and too little income to service it.
There is an unbelievable amount of private debt that that needs be “de-leveraged” over the next few years. The major money center banks are basically insolvent. Credit is being withdrawn from the market in massive amounts. Defaults on mortgages, commercial real estate loans, credit cards will continue for years. The BLS U6 measure of the unemployed, discouraged and under employed workers is at 17% or 26 million workers. One in four mortgages are “under water” and this number will rise as home values continue to fall despite massive federal efforts to re-inflate them. One in eight Americans is on food stamps (one in four children). The 50 states are looking at combined budget deficits of $350B projected over the next two years. Recovery? Recovery to what? Another cheap credit fueled bubble economy? I don’t think so.
Small businesses will be financing their IT services out of their accounts receivable or barter. They will need to move their IT services into the cloud or they will go out of business. With fewer servers to “manage” in small businesses MSPs will find themselves looking for the next major play in IT, which is cloud computing. The time of the MSP has come and gone. Cooperative efforts among some MSPs may delay the inevitable but it isn’t going to matter when all of the servers are in the cloud.