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    • Becoming a CSP: readiness, skills and benefits

    Assess whether you are ready to become a CSP, which skills are needed and which benefits the program offers. From internal self-assessment to emerging skills, through to the key points: ownership, upsell, IP services and agile billing. A single path to align organization, team and offering with the cloud model.

      Register as a Partner   Readiness   Skills   Benefits

    Distributed by CoreTech · CSP guide for Providers and Partners

    Becoming a CSP on the Provider side

    After understanding how to guide the customer through migration, the provider must ask what to do internally. Two questions open the path:

    Am I interested and ready?

    A technical and business self-assessment is needed: skills, organization and medium- to long-term goals.

    What do my customers think?

    Assess how many existing customers may be interested in the new model before investing.

    If the answers are positive, you move on to internal analysis and the business plan, following clear milestones.

    Characteristics of a good CSP

    To offer cloud-based services on the provider side, these foundations are needed:

    Control of one's own capabilities
    • Specific technical skills
    • Project and migration management capability
    • Tools suited to the new business
    • Ideas and goals for the medium and long term
    • Verification of staff readiness
    Priorities: must / nice / not-to-have

    Classify requirements and features as must-have, nice-to-have and not-to-have so as not to scatter resources during the start-up phase.

    Initial estimates
    • Initial implementation costs
    • Sales plan for activated services
    • Initial feedback from a selection of customers
    Platforms and testing

    Equip yourselves with adequate platforms and test them thoroughly before go-to-market.

    Customer feedback and continuous improvement

    Significant sample

    Choose customers who can dedicate themselves to testing (including edge cases), give feedback on product and pricing, with similar or grouped business profiles.

    Learn to do it better

    Differentiate the cloud offering, adopt new technologies, train staff and build marketing and partnerships: continuous improvement is the real goal after launch.

    Skills of a CSP

    Knowing cloud, providers and architectures is no longer optional. For an MSP/system integrator the “network” is the sum of all customer clients and servers: without automation and scripting you cannot stay competitive.

    Automation

    Key to managing large estates with efficiency and margins.

    Scripting

    The operational skill that makes automation concrete.

    SysAdmin → DevOps

    DevOps skills include those of the SysAdmin: those who do not close the gap risk being replaced.

    Skills of a SysAdmin

    Yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's work — with a focus that is shifting toward cloud, automation and security:

    Hardware maintenance
    Client help desk
    Administration (Win and Linux)
    IT manager (soft skill)
    Consulting
    Security
    Networking
    Software licensing
    Monitoring
    Backup
    Disaster Recovery
    High Availability
    VoIP
    Cloud Architect
    DevOps
    Digital transformation
    Virtualization
    Scripting
    Automation
    Container / Docker
    Cloud
    Cybersecurity
    Skills plan: As Is, Must, Nice to have
    As Is — established skills

    Already established capabilities: only maintenance work and continuous updating.

    Upgrade / Must — skills to acquire

    Missing abilities to stay competitive: strategic internal ones (acquirable in a short time) or via external partners. This highlights the need for partnerships and for coming out of isolation.

    Nice to have

    Desirable skills but not a short-term priority for this type of market.

    The benefits for a CSP

    Public cloud grows mainly on SaaS: those who combine cloud skills and business results will lead the next phase.

    Higher revenue

    Cloud applications in the company open the way to recurring revenue and higher margins.

    Evolve the business

    Customers do not only migrate workloads: they invest in the cloud for new functionality.

    Improve skills

    The winner is whoever mixes cloud skills with a clear focus on the results the customer requires.

    Key points of the CSP program

    Four levers on which to build engagement and recurring revenue:

    Customer Ownership
    • Active role of the partner in the customer lifecycle, pre- and post-sales.
    • Stronger engagement: profits depend on purchase and renewal; the customer stays if they are satisfied.
    • The partner can actively drive the customer lifecycle.
    Upsell / Cross-Sell

    More cloud usage means persistent revenue and room to expand sales over time and onto new cloud products.

    IP acceleration (service software)
    • License sales alone are not very profitable in the long term: it is better to combine them with services built on the cloud.
    • Licenses can account for about 15% of recurring revenue; services developed on the cloud environment can exceed 60% for the partner.
    Provisioning & Billing Agility
    • Billing flexibility compared to other licensing models.
    • The partner can manage licensing for the customer or leave it autonomous.
    • APIs enable provisioning and billing environments that are transparent to the end customer.

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