You may or may not have heard of NetEnrich’s “closet to cloud” approach to IT operations. But it’s a simple concept: NetEnrich has a solution for MSPs to effectively monitor their customers’ IT infrastructure no matter where it’s located — on premise or in the cloud. And NetEnrich CEO Raju Chekuri believes such flexibility is critical as MSPs increasingly deal with closet infrastructure, cloud infrastructure or a combination thereof.

“If you’re going to get into operations you better offer a closet-to-cloud solution your customer needs — small, medium or large, it doesn’t really matter,” Chekuri said. He offered deeper details in this FastChat Video:

Key Considerations

No doubt, the cloud is becoming more top of mind among MSPs as they strive to fulfill customer needs and grapple with their own decision to migrate.

“The world is heading toward the cloud [and] there is a lot of euphoria around it,” Chekuri said. “A lot of big people are spending a lot of big money to do it, as well as traditional data centers that are creating private clouds and public clouds. But right now the MSP is discerning what is available out there, what to target, when to participate — it all depends on the strategy.”

Plus, he said, MSPs must take into consideration the market they want to attack with cloud services, since each segment enters the cloud at a different level. “For MSPs that target the SMBs, there’s a different leverage point for the cloud. And for those that are targeting SMEs, there’s a different leverage point. And if you go to the enterprise it’s a different [leverage point].” Where an MSP jumps into the cloud game depends largely on where it wants to go, he said.

“MSPs have to grapple with this complexity from a strategy standpoint, but when it comes to execution, they have to have the team, the technology [and] the operations to make it work seamlessly,” he added. “And it has to go back to the whole idea of closet to cloud, it doesn’t matter [where the infrastructure resides].

“If you really look at the adoption of the cloud, it will take some time before it become ubiquitous and everyone’s using it. But in the meantime over the next five to 10 years, there’s a lot of infrastructure sitting in the closet and some moving to cloud and the rate of change will depend on what the end client is all about,” Chekuri said.

That’s why MSPs need to be there to advise their clients, even acting as the “fractional CIO” to help them transition to the cloud if it makes sense or keep their infrastructure “in the closet” if that makes more sense. “So no matter where they go, you can operate [their infrastructure] and get on the critical path of success for your end client,” he said.