Communications Service Providers Should Cozy Up to MSPs

One of the best things a Communications Service Provider (CSP) could do is to develop deep partnerships with Managed Service Providers (MSP) and use those services to buttress communications offerings, or so says Finnish Telecom IT provider Tecnotree, in a new whitepaper.

And Tecnotree is talking about going well beyond CSPs just becoming MSP customers. Instead, they should craft true partnerships where the fundamental CSP offerings are not just enhanced, but revolutionized. “True Value Partners create value. Creating value implies producing value that has not existed before, or that the CSP is not able to produce on its own,” Tecnotree said in a statement. “Value creation is accomplished by providing exponential value with incremental cost. This is achieved by rearranging the assets (both tangible and intangible) in such a manner that the unique setup of the assets will create the value that did not exist there before.”

This is especially critical as the CSP space becomes more competitive and vendors seek competitive advantage. This is best done by having the CSP focus on the core business, and not waste employee cycles managing what could be handled by an MSP. “The new competitive landscape that CSPs face requires a new paradigm providing and operating mission-critical business support systems. Forward looking CSPs focus on core business processes and core competences, and outsource the rest to subject matter experts,” said Ilkka Aura, chief commercial officer of Tecnotree.

According to Tecnotree, there are an untold amount of tasks MSPs can take off CSPs hands. “Managed Services is the practice of outsourcing day-to-day IT management responsibilities of the set of applications that the CSP has acquired to support its business operations and now desires to outsource to an MSP. Managed Services does not include the acquisition of the suite of BSS applications but the operation of them. Managed Services includes the traditional service desk and support and maintenance services associated with the annual support and maintenance agreement in a licensing business model. But the scope in Managed Services extends to proactively maintaining the applications, monitoring the availability of the applications and securing the future capacity of the applications. Managed Services furthermore ensures the secure processing and storing of data,” the whitepaper explained.

The benefits of CSP/MSP partnership are legion, starting with achieving competitive advantage. “The MSP can provide economies of scale through its global operations, which helps to drive down the costs per subscriber served and improve profit margins. The best-in-the-industry subject matter expertise boosts operational efficiency with CSP-specific best business practices,” the whitepaper said.