What are the Benefits of Being an Azure Managed Service Provider (MSP)?

An Azure managed service provider is an IT service provider running their core business on Microsoft Azure. Azure services include service monitoring, DevOps, security and compliance, and more. Ideally, an Azure MSP provides comprehensive Azure managed services to numerous clients more efficiently.

IT service delivery is changing rapidly. Most traditional methods have become outdated, as most businesses prefer highly scalable and reliable cloud platforms.

As an Azure MSP, you have the task of designing ideal cloud solutions, managing migration, and delivering knowledgeable insights to your clients. With Microsoft Azure, you can provide innovation, deliver more robust solutions, develop custom applications, and gain a competitive edge.

Here are some of the benefits of being an Azure managed service provider:

Rich Catalogue of Services

Microsoft Azure has many easy-to-use services such as cloud storage, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform, and many more. Utilizing these services can be the differentiator in the market.

Azure services have a very high hidden value. You can use infrastructure-as-a-code to manage your test environments and configure your cloud environment consistently.

Microsoft has proactive research and development capabilities to add new services and streamline the existing ones.

Seamless Cloud Storage

MSPs with a considerable customer base have lots of data at their disposal. Handling this data securely can be a significant problem, considering how traditional storage mechanisms are vulnerable to disasters.

With Azure, you can store lots of data for your business and your clients. In addition, Azure provides seamless data access regardless of where you are, which makes it easy to effectively manage IT for numerous customers.

Azure storage is highly scalable, as you only pay for what you use, meaning you have the flexibility to scale down to reduce costs or scale up to meet demand.

Access to Microsoft 365 Solutions

One of the benefits of running your MSP business on Azure is the seamless access to Microsoft productivity tools. Your business can use various tools such as Office 365, Outlook, and SharePoint for service delivery. Azure’s virtual environment brings all these services together, streamlining business operations.

Security and Compliance

Most cloud platforms have to deal with complex security challenges. In recent years, hackers have become highly sophisticated and use every opportunity to exploit MSPs and their customers.

Microsoft Azure has invested heavily to ensure that they have a robust cloud framework to combat this challenge. Azure has measures to prevent IT downtimes, such as constant backups and automated incident management. Also, Azure has built services that enable automatic compliance with most regulatory requirements.

Using Microsoft Azure’s Agility and Innovation Capabilities

Most traditional MSPs have a significant disadvantage when it comes to provisioning new services or onboarding new customers. Disadvantages occur due to the siloed nature of infrastructure where networking, compute, storage operate as separate functions. This approach is neither efficient nor sustainable and can hinder growth significantly.

Microsoft Azure provides a high-level resource efficiency, as you can treat storage, compute, and network infrastructure as a flexible pool of resources. With Azure, you can scale business-critical apps and improve performance. Azure enables you to build and deploy apps faster and increase the scale of your workloads.

Seamless Cloud Migration

Azure helps MSPs migrate their customers’ IT with first-class migration resources, tooling, and support. You can migrate the entire IT depending on your customer’s needs, through the Azure Migrate and Azure Migrate Program.

Azure enables centralized migration across all infrastructure, data, and apps. You can use new features in Azure Migrate, such as PowerShell support and Azure Kubernetes Service, to migrate web and .NET apps. The Azure Migration Program provides MSPs with extended support for major source frameworks such as PostgreSQL, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python), and Java.

Azure Enables Hybrid Cloud Architecture

Running as an MSP can be quite tricky, as some organizations may be hesitant to move to public cloud models. For some customers, migrating their IT environment to Azure can be out of the equation, prompting them to opt for a hybrid approach.

Unlike most cloud vendors, Microsoft Azure is open to a hybrid approach. For instance, you can use the Azure Stack as an extension of Azure within your data center.

Business Growth and New Statement of Work (SOW)

Azure acts as an additional marketing tool, offering your business an opportunity to market new opportunities. Azure allows you to audit your client’s IT environment against well-architected practices. Through these audits, you can convince your customers of a unique value proposition and how you can deliver better performance, cost optimization, and security.

Become an Azure MSP With nOps

Running your MSP business on Azure enables you to run highly secure, scalable, and reliable services. With a proper cloud strategy, you can scale your MSP to newer heights and gain a competitive edge in the industry.

nOps enables MSPs to enhance their practice to win more customers, gain a competitive edge, and become more profitable. With nOps, you can easily optimize costs and offer your customers a unique value proposition.
Get started with nOps today to enhance your MSP!