How MSPs can Monetise Global Network Connectivity for New Growth

In the age of commoditised network services and pandemic-driven demand for cloud connectivity, many service providers are feeling the strain.

Some are experiencing thin margins as enterprise customers are now doing more with less. Others are losing customers because their service offering simply aren’t sticky enough or costs more than the competition.

Other service providers are simply not agile enough to offer new connectivity features and keep up with user requirements at the furious pace that the current economic pressures are placing on organisations to pivot their businesses.

According to Forrester, 64 percent of all dollars flow indirectly in the technology industry, with the channel model contributing to US$2.26 trillion. Furthermore, the global drive to enlarge the digital economy is definitely full of opportunities even amid the problems mentioned.

The answer to all the current problems faced by the managed service providers (MSP), system integrators (SI), tier-2 and 3 data centre operators even carriers is right there: forming strategic partnerships to support growth and competitiveness across the value chain.

Partnering for growth

By teaming up strategically, MSPs and other service providers can leverage their partner’s strengths while eliminating weaknesses. Likewise, their customers benefit from consolidating their vendor lists and simplifying relationships.

The channel partner model has been proven to be effective in facilitating these commercial and technical relationships. Service providers are joining forces to innovate faster to support cloud-based services, new revenue streams can be created, in turn boosting agility and global reach.

Now for the tricky part: which are the right partners to join forces with? Let us first summarise the cloud connectivity situation that the world is currently facing:

• Increasing networking and application complexity:
In the era of everything on-demand, enterprise users don’t just want the best user experience, but also a great ‘application experience’. This refers to the increasingly complex mix of different on-demand applications being used to create new solutions for new problems.

With a mix of complex applications, come complex connectivity issues—a pain point that must be addressed.

• More demanding customers:
With heavy cloud service commoditisation comes customer choice. Any service provider that does not continually offer better features and pricing models fast enough may soon be ditched. Those that lack a solid network infrastructure are also losing out to large agile competitors that can rapidly turn up new services anytime, anywhere.

Also, some service providers have complex platforms that turn users off especially at a time when they need to pivot their business model yesterday, not tomorrow. This can also mean they need scalability and global reach now—something that the smaller service providers are not able to keep pace with.

Monetising On-Demand Connectivity with a Specialist Partner

If all the aforementioned problems sound familiar, then the one-step answer to engaging in a sure-win channel partnership is also going to be familiar.

Accelerate your business with a Network-as-Service (NaaS) platform that has the following strengths:

• Offers a global fabric of interconnected data centres with on-ramps to public clouds (Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle cloud), internet exchanges and a growing list of network partners—all with consistent quality of service and experience
• Secure private and dedicated (inter)connectivity that are scalable with business needs at the touch of a simple-to-use portal interface.
• NaaS simplifies management of the on-demand connectivity and functionalities, allows programmable automation and API integration, and 24/7 self-service to cut service response times.
• Supported by connectivity experts and analytics for full visibility and minimise maintenance challenges
• Provides rich monetisation opportunities by allowing channel partners to have full control of the customer relationships with a white-label platform, empowering service providers to offer differentiated products and services to achieve customer stickiness and loyalty.
• Run by an established cloud-native connectivity specialist that focuses on offering predictable costs, flexible pricing strategies and constant innovation to expand its global partnership base.

The Epsilon Advantage

As a connectivity specialist built from the cloud down (instead of from the ground up), Epsilon and its award-winning Infiny platform is the answer to service providers wanting greater growth possibilities.

In this era of everything on-demand, Epsilon channel partners can go beyond offering traditional network services to offer competitive connectivity solutions, helping customers to solve today’s challenges and meet the demands of tomorrow.

All the pre-requisites for this undertaking—agility, scalable, adaptability, simplicity and monetisability—are tapping on Epsilon’s global network fabric. Best of all, Infiny’s software-defined networking (SDN) infrastructure and web portal interface makes it simple to deploy connectivity on the fly! With a bit of service training and Infiny configuration, any service provider can get up and running within days.

But what if a service provider is currently doing well on its own? Do the vast benefits of joining a global expert in cloud connectivity for future-proofing make more sense than doing it alone in an increasingly challenging digital economy? If customers can benefit from digital transformation at a faster pace, surely service providers need to pivot quickly.

In that case, welcome to the Epsilon Channel Partnership family soon!