Episode Details

By Doug Green “You’re really selling expertise, judgment and an understanding of the customer’s goals.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Devon Rutherford, Sales Solution Manager at Leaseweb, discusses why MSPs should rethink infrastructure sales around customer workloads rather than around a preferred vendor or platform. Leaseweb is an infrastructure-as-a-service provider offering colocation, private and public cloud, dedicated servers, security services and other infrastructure solutions. Rutherford says the MSP market has changed because customers can now buy cloud and infrastructure services directly from a wide range of providers. That means the real value of the MSP increasingly lies in expertise. “The customer can go buy the infrastructure,” Rutherford says. “What they need from the MSP is help understanding where the workload should actually live.” That may mean avoiding the temptation to place every workload onto the platform that offers the best margin or partner incentive. Different workloads have different requirements. An AI inference workload may need to be close to the end user. A stable application may run more economically on bare metal. Other workloads may need public cloud elasticity, object storage, CDN services or specialized compliance controls. That naturally leads toward hybrid infrastructure. Rutherford says the MSP’s role is increasingly to understand the business objective, regulatory requirements, performance needs and economics of each workload and then assemble the appropriate infrastructure. That consultative approach can also create recurring revenue. Instead of treating infrastructure placement as a one-time project, MSPs can establish regular reviews with customers to determine whether workloads are still in the right environment as requirements change. “Infrastructure is highly commoditized,” Rutherford says. “Consultative expertise isn’t.” For MSPs planning for the year ahead, his recommendation is to follow the workload rather than the vendor. That can strengthen customer trust while positioning the MSP as the ongoing adviser responsible for making the different pieces of a hybrid environment work together. Leaseweb supports that approach with infrastructure options across bare metal, cloud, storage and colocation, along with engineers who can work directly with partners and customers on architecture decisions. Visit Leaseweb.com to learn more.