Bali is a great place for a break but an even better place to get quality time with customers and suppliers during the two-day talkfest that is Canalys. Yes, there are some formal sessions, but the better value comes from planned 1:1 meetings, networking events, and casual conversations in the corridors or over breakfast and lunch. Not just with others from New Zealand but also Australia and all around the APAC region.
Bluechip Infotech hosted 50 partners from New Zealand and Australia. New Zealand was represented by our Managing Director Chris Fitzgerald, sales manager Arsh Singh and UC business development manager Megan Twentyman, while from Australia, we had our sales director Ron Jarvis, vendor and alliances director Willy Harsono, and enterprise solutions lead Matthew Hales. We used this time to engage with senior leadership from our customers to get a feel for the state of the MSP ecosystem – what works, what doesn’t, and what 2025 looks like.
Increasingly, the IT partner is not consulted or involved with the business applications a customer uses – especially as many of those are now cloud apps – so it’s all about the network, cybersecurity and data. Plus, of course, the now-ubiquitous meeting room equipment which is ready for a refresh cycle in many cases.
From the outside, the solution set offered by every MSP looks the same – different brands in their tech stack, but what is represented to the client is a set of business benefits. That does not mean the MSP never changes their stack – indeed, continual review is necessary. This year the question of whether they had the right MDR for their needs seemed top of mind for some, and which vendors are ready to respond to AI-driven intrusions. By the end of next year, who knows what brand they will be using.
Pricing of services to customers is always a hot topic. Do you let customers NOT subscribe to your full stack if they feel they have no need for it? Or do you “fire” those customers? What if the customer has been with you for 23 years? A delicate set of issues to negotiate.
Is AI a thing that is or will make money for MSPs? Generally, no – customers want their trusted adviser to tell them what’s happening, but AI is just a feature of the apps an MSP uses, not a product in itself, despite some vendor pitches to the contrary.
How to win new customers? Relationships and referrals. Getting success stories spread far and wide. Building and maintaining a great reputation. Don’t be a “jack of all trades, master of none”, recognise where you have a point of difference and build on that then partner with others to fill your gaps.
An interesting observation from one of the analysts presenting at Canalys was that while 65 per cent of survey respondents are likely or highly likely to move some workloads to the public cloud, 59 per cent are likely or highly likely to repatriate some workloads to private or hosted data centres. But not to on-premise.
So, was the trip worth it? Absolutely.
