3 Ways to Build Momentum for 2019 and Beyond

… managing the solutions for their customers. Managed service providers that provide value-added security services to their offerings, such as deployment, configuration, remote management, managed detection and response, risk mitigation and security awareness, and monitoring and reporting, to name a few, can become a full-fledged managed security service provider (MSSP). This type of strategic addition helps small and midmarket customers easily subscribe to services they wouldn’t have the budget or expertise to manage in-house. In return, this model provides ongoing value for the customer and greater profits for the IT solution provider.

Differentiation

Last, and possibly most important of the three pillars, is differentiation. It’s no secret that today, many vendor solutions offer similar capabilities. So most channel partners end up offering the same or similar products and services, making it challenging to distinguish themselves from the competition. Fortunately, this common obstacle can be overcome by leveraging one of two effective approaches.

The first is specialization. IT solution providers can differentiate themselves by specializing in areas like security, vertical markets, customer size or deployment models. Second, channel players can seek out innovative products that offer capabilities that others can’t match. Building strong relationships with leading vendors and building expertise in technologies that solve problems more effectively than the competition is a great way to stand out from the pack.

Just take a look at the Wi-Fi and network services market. Wi-Fi is an incredibly well-known and mature solution category, wherein most vendors offer highly similar products – which often, collectively, provide about the same set of capabilities as the next comparable option. For this reason, it has become increasingly difficult for IT solution providers to meaningfully differentiate themselves in the wireless services arena. In response, I’ve seen IT solution providers differentiate themselves by tackling the issue of security in networking and Wi-Fi. Offering a wireless network that’s not only fast and scalable, but also secure, helps differentiate IT solution providers through an offering that ensures differentiated business continuity for their customers.

Setting Up a Successful New Year

The ever-evolving technology landscape demands that partners constantly re-examine their businesses. While customer needs, technologies and challenges may change year in and year out, maintaining the ability to innovate at speed, the openness to adopt new business models, and the drive to differentiate will ensure partners are best positioned to be successful in 2019 and beyond.

Himanshu Verma is a director of product management at WatchGuard Technologies, with a primary focus on delivering WatchGuard products and solutions to the managed security service provider (MSSP) market. Prior to WatchGuard, he held product management roles for the enterprise authentication-as-a-service division of SafeNet (now Gemalto). During his time at SafeNet, Himanshu helped transition the enterprise authentication business from a traditional on-premises product to a successful SaaS solution. He has extensive experience in in-bound and out-bound product management, engineering and R&D for information security and data protection technologies. Follow @watchguard on Twitter.