What Can MSPs Learn from IT Consumerization?

IT transformation is being driven by modern methods of delivering services and MSPs can lead the way in helping customers.
The growth of smart mobile devices has led to a simultaneous advance of social gaming. Game developers are taking advantage of this trend by building popular products that resonate with youth. Not surprisingly, Facebook has enabled the social component of gaming by allowing their platform to be used via APIs.

Companies like Joyent act as cloud service providers specifically targeting Facebook game developers with a niche solution. For example, an immensely successful social game called Candy Crush Saga recently surpassed Angry Birds to become the most popular game. This shows that consumerization of IT opens opportunities to anyone with a great concept who can quickly assemble and deliver a solution that can scale to demand.

In enterprise IT environments, you can see similar developments affecting Managed Service Providers. For example, Joyent delivers infrastructure cloud services for companies like King (the developer of Candy Crush Saga) for game delivery. The IT ecosystem has to change with services delivered in an easy to use manner that simplifies consumption, since assembling a cloud solution from multiple services requires deep expertise. However, MSPs can fill these needs similarly to how they support social games produced and delivered to consumers.

read more