In part two of our two-part series on MSP hyperspecialization, we share tips and examples of how MSPs can create their own extremely competitive niche. (Read part one on why hyperspecialization is such a high-margin opportunity.) So you get the business benefits of hyperspecializing your MSP to serve a particular business niche, and you understand the five criteria of niche expertise you need to do so. Awesome! You’re ready to jump aboard a high-margin opportunity. But… now what?

Just like the goblins, ghouls, and ghosts that’ll be walking down your street tomorrow night, network management can be scary. If you’re not a network expert (and don’t have one on your payroll), it can be intimidating to make changes to clients’ infrastructure for fear of taking the network down. Small actions can have a big impact.

One of the things we at IT Glue wanted to accomplish with the production of our inaugural Global MSP Benchmark Report was to identify what a top-performing MSP looks like. There were certainly some surprises—such as the reality that size doesn’t matter—but a lot of what we found was fairly intuitive. In this rapidly growing industry, there are around 20% of MSPs that are seeing both high growth (10%+ per annum) and high margins (20%+ net margin).

It seems like every year, there’s a trendy new business model that managed services providers (MSPs) are told to adopt if you want to, well, survive. The most obvious example in 2018 is security. Cybercrime is a hot topic at channel conferences, and vendors are offering content in droves to help MSPs package and sell managed security services with the promise it’ll help you better protect your customers—and your business.

Winning new clients is one of the most satisfying feelings for any business owner. But scaling can present some operational challenges. For example, one King Kong-sized hurdle many MSP businesses face is how to increase—or even maintain—margins during growth. It’s hard to provide the same standard of customer service to a larger client base without adding more (expensive) technicians to your payroll. … if you’re not using automation to create efficiencies.

Switches are the most common network device deployed on MSP-managed networks, while routers are the least popular—and not by a small margin. The data in Auvik’s recently published report, Managing Network Vendor Diversity: The MSP Challenge, shows switches represent almost half (48%) of all network devices on MSP-managed sites, while routers account for only 6% of the total. Does this mean the death of the router is imminent? In short, no—and here’s why.

To effectively support and manage a client’s network, you need to know what’s really on the network. Sure, a tour of the IT environment will help. You’ll be able to slowly document information about the devices you can see, like the make, model, and serial number. But what about the devices you can’t see—or that the client doesn’t know about?

WATERLOO, ON / August 28, 2018 — The network hardware market is highly fragmented, with hundreds of equipment vendors vying for market share, says a new report from Auvik Networks. There’s intense competition in the network switch, router, firewall, and access point hardware markets, with upwards of 40 vendors competing in each category.

Whether you inherit an IT environment or build it from scratch, managing your clients’ network infrastructure can be a real headache. Keeping clients’ network devices functioning so they stay connected and productive requires complex manual tasks, expensive expertise, and tons of valuable time—that is, if you don’t use software to simplify and automate network management activities.

There are few office experiences more frustrating than sending a document to the printer and hearing… nothing. No whirring, no thumping, no document. Your client will probably check if the device is plugged in and turned on, if there’s enough ink, and if paper needs restocking. But if these simple fixes don’t uncover the problem, then they’ll likely call you—and in the past, that meant jumping in the car and driving to the client site.