The cloud has become the foundation for technologies and architectures that shape a digital business, including agile app development, next-generation analytics and artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and edge configurations. But as new service offerings proliferate, so does complexity. As it turns out, it is easy to deploy a cloud instance but very difficult to implement an effective cloud strategy. As early as 2010, respondents to the Frost & Sullivan Global Cloud User Survey have identified knowledge gaps within their organizations as a hindrance to cloud adoption.

According to the 2020 Frost & Sullivan Global Cloud User Survey, 68% of IT leaders and 62% of business leaders identify “keeping up with the pace of new technologies being introduced into the market” as a critical challenge to implementing a cloud strategy. Furthermore, the percentage of businesses saying they have “insufficient cloud expertise on staff” has increased from 26% in 2018 to 57% in 2020. As the complexity, urgency, and pace of cloud technologies accelerates, organizations feel less equipped to deal with their cloud strategies on their own.

The knowledge gap, however, opens opportunities for third-party cloud experts to assist organizations with their cloud deployments. Increasing numbers of organizations of all sizes and from all industries are engaging expert cloud managed services providers (MSPs) for assistance with a range of functions. According to the 2020 Frost & Sullivan survey, 64% of businesses worldwide have invested in some sort of managed cloud service, whereas another 27% have considered adding or expanding their use of such services in the next two years. Cloud services providers also welcome MSPs as effective channel partners.

But how do the managed services providers gain and maintain the expertise they need to be successful? To aid clients, MSPs must remain knowledgeable across a range of evolving technologies, vendor capabilities and processes, and enterprise use cases. They also must understand how to run their businesses in a cloud model that has a very different cost structure from other types of channel partner relationships, such as value-added resellers (VARs), IT services providers, and systems integrators (SIs).

In this brief, Frost & Sullivan examines the evolving role of the cloud managed services provider from three perspectives: a cloud services provider, AWS; an AWS MSP partner, Cloudreach; and the firm responsible for training, auditing, and certifying thousands of MSPs on behalf of AWS and other cloud providers, Information Security Systems International (ISSI).

Author: Lynda Stadtmueller