Integration of AI adds many benefits for managed service providers including early detection, scalable delivery, predictive services, automated remediation, allowing channel partners to leverage the expected 10% market growth, says Abdul Rehman at SolarWinds.
The channel ecosystem in the Middle East has been evolving at an unprecedented pace. The box movers, who touted low margins as their competitive edge, have all but gone extinct, replaced by the new breed of trusted advisors who focus on value addition across the entirety of their customers’ digital transformation journeys.
Seeing the writing on the wall, these forward-focused channel organisations embraced the cloud, developed expertise in consultancy, implementation, and support, and adopted new business models such as subscription-based services.
This has resonated strongly with regional enterprises, evidenced in fact that these companies are increasingly turning to Managed Service Providers, MSPs to help design and manage their IT environments.
Recent research shows that the GCC Managed Services market is expected to grow from US$9.52 billion in 2023 to US$14.98 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 9.49% during this period. It stands to reason then that regional channel organisations looking to strengthen their value proposition would benefit from developing compelling managed service offerings.
But to turn this new practice into a sustainable and profitable revenue stream, MSPs must themselves overcome the same challenges their customers are turning to them to address. This is easier said than done.
As MSPs manage increasingly complex IT environments for their customers, the potential for downtime goes up, and their ability to maintain their SLAs goes down. Because companies hire MSPs to deal with IT issues quickly and effectively, this increased complexity is a significant risk to any MSP unable to rise to the challenge.
To continue serving existing customers and scale to grow, MSPs are increasingly turning to AI-powered observability solutions. Here are the top five reasons AI-powered observability solutions are becoming a core component of MSP offerings this year.
Early detection
Observability tools offer insights, automated analytics, and actionable intelligence through cross domain data correlation across massive real time and historical metrics. Providing a comprehensive and unified view of today’s modern, distributed, and hybrid network environments makes observability a critical way for MSPs to continuously improve performance, availability, security, and digital experience for their customers.
AI-powered observability solutions use machine learning algorithms to continuously monitor and analyse large amounts of data from various sources, such as servers, applications, networks, and databases. The algorithms can quickly detect anomalies or unusual patterns that may indicate a problem or potential issue, even in complex and dynamic environments, enabling MSPs to proactively address issues before they escalate into major incidents or downtime. This increased efficiency is critical for MSPs looking to maximise profit.
Streamlined deployment
Modern AI-powered observability solutions are often sold through a highly profitable SaaS model. This provides simplicity for the customer because they are no longer burdened with more on-premises servers. A SaaS platform is often easier to deploy for the same reason. A SaaS-delivered observability platform also provides immediate topline and recurring revenue for MSPs facing increased market competition.
Scalable delivery
A unified AI-powered observability platform from the right partner can provide the basis of a highly effective delivery strategy for MSPs. Unified observability is a critical strategy for any customer. Still, MSPs should specifically look for an observability platform designed to be customised with additional services or functionality to meet the customer’s needs. This ensures both scalability for the MSP and the flexibility to meet customers’ needs.
Predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance is a proactive approach to maintenance that aims to predict when systems are likely to fail. This enables the MSP to schedule maintenance activities before any failure occurs.
By identifying patterns and anomalies in data collected from various sources, such as logs, metrics, and events, AI-driven observability solutions enable MSPs to make informed decisions on maintenance. Further, these algorithms can learn from past incidents and recognise patterns indicating an increased likelihood of failure in the future.
Automated remediation
AI-driven observability solutions can also detect issues and trigger automated remediation actions in response to them, enabling MSPs to respond proactively to incidents, reducing the time required to resolve them to ensure critical systems and applications remain available and perform optimally. The process happens in real time, allowing action to be taken immediately without human intervention.
Automated remediation actions can also adjust configurations, restart services, or perform proactive measures to prevent potential issues. By automating remediation actions, MSPs can significantly reduce the mean time to resolution, MTTR for incidents.
The MTTR is the time elapsed between detecting an incident and resolving it. A shorter MTTR means incidents are resolved faster, which leads to less downtime, fewer disruptions, and improved overall system performance.
Automating remediation actions can reduce the operations team’s workload, as the AI algorithms can perform routine tasks automatically. This allows MSPs to focus on more critical and complex tasks, such as analysing data trends, identifying patterns, and developing predictive models.
AI-powered observability solutions offer MSPs advanced capabilities and improve overall efficiency. This supports MSPs in addressing the complexities of the modern IT landscape. By harnessing the potential of AI-driven observability, MSPs can take proactive measures to address potential issues before they escalate into major incidents or downtime.
These advancements also allow MSPs to focus on strategic initiatives and drive innovation, unlocking new opportunities for growth in an increasingly competitive market.
