4 Ways MSPs Can Deliver Digital Transformation with Cloud Technology

Nick Heddy

Digital transformation happens when a company adopts and implements digital technology to improve operations and processes, an essential move to grow and scale effectively. Companies can further enhance their business by adopting cloud technology that offers additional features and benefits. The advanced automation capabilities of cloud technology will reduce operation time and remove human touchpoints, resulting in increased productivity, efficiency and security.

According to a recent Forrester report, “Cloud Computing Predictions 2021,” a top priority for businesses post-pandemic is improving the use of data insights in decision-making. Cloud technology allows companies to capture, track and store various data types to better understand their customers’ demographics and buying behaviors. This insight enables them to become more strategic in their operations, product development, marketing, and sales initiatives.

Cloud technology is also a proven solution that enables employees to work from anywhere, empowering companies to be agile and nimble in the new hybrid workplace.

While the pandemic accelerated the digital transformation for many companies, a significant number still haven’t migrated to the cloud. We’ve seen a couple barriers to entry, including security concerns, proper equipment and associated costs. However, the main reason is many companies lack the IT support to complete the project and manage the ongoing infrastructure, which creates an excellent opportunity for managed service providers (MSPs). The subscription-based sales model of cloud technology also makes a fantastic recurring revenue stream with additional income from associated services.

4 Ways to Aid Digital Transformation

MSPs can deliver digital transformation to their clients and gain new profit in the following four ways and grow their cloud practice.

Establish the modern workplace. Through cloud technology, MSPs can establish and secure their clients’ modern workplaces with solutions that provide advanced automation, communication and collaboration capabilities and enhanced security features. The ability for employees to safely work from anywhere on any device allows the company to be adaptable to the changing workplace. The automation that cloud technology provides streamlines processes, increasing efficiency, productivity and revenue.

And according to Forbes, with cloud technology, ongoing IT support is reduced by 55% and ROI is 4.01 times greater than on-premise technology. Additionally, cloud technology deploys quickly, is easily configured and is simple to manage, making the solutions desirable for MSPs.

Cloud technology also significantly increases clients’ security postures. Its automation removes manual touch points and reduces the chance of human error, and large data centers monitor and protect data from sophisticated threats through enhanced safeguards. Utilizing data centers instead of on-premise servers further protects a company from data loss in a natural disaster. And unlike on-premise technology, when vendors release software patches through the cloud, they’re automatically pushed to all users, ensuring they have the most recent fixes.

Utilize the Microsoft cloud platforms. Microsoft’s cloud platforms provide an excellent option for MSPs new to the technology to begin building a practice. The Microsoft cloud ecosystem is the most mature in the industry and offers significant opportunities to expand your business and increase revenue. It provides MSPs the advanced technologies to enable their clients with powerful business solutions. The Modern Workplace suite includes productivity tools to collaborate and communicate anywhere in a secure and virtual environment. Azure offers users the ability to use their frameworks, infrastructure and data center to build and deploy their applications. And with Dynamics, users have a portfolio of business solutions to achieve operational excellence and develop a tremendous customer experience.

Microsoft prefers MSPs to access its cloud solutions through the CSP program and built it specifically to enable its cloud business. Through the program, MSPs purchase licenses through a CSP distributor and gain access to marketing materials, training and user guides to accelerate their cloud practice. They can also earn incentives and rebates based on …