The Five Stages of A Cloud Transition for VARs and MSPs

By samdizzy

five

During a presentation from STL President Tim Norman and Senior VP Timothy Pfeiffer, offered these five stages of a cloud transition for VARs and MSPs…

1. Denial: This is your staff’s inability to deal with change amid the cloud computing wave.

2. Anger: Employees start to blame their employer or manager for the “forced” transition to a cloud services model.

3. Bargaining: Otherwise known as mutiny attempts during the transition.

4. Depression: Where employees and the company start to wonder how they can get back on top of their business, their market, and industry trends.

5. Acceptance: Entire staff starts to believe “we can grow with this.”

From VAR to MSP to CSP

Norman said the transition from MSP to CSP is more dramatic than the transition from VAR to MSP. The reason involves your customer target, he said. “The table stakes are higher because you’re at the table discussing cloud with your customers’ executive team,” said Norman.

Indeed, customers consider managed services interesting but needed plenty of education from MSPs. In stark contrast, the cloud services conversation often starts with in-bound customer inquiries, and strategic direction discussions about the future direction of all applications, data, etc.