Businesses rely on MSPs and VARS to supplement their IT staff. The emergence COVID-19 has had a significant impact on VARs, MSPs, and other service providers that support customers’ IT operations. It is now more difficult for MSPs and VARs to ensure their clients are functional during the lockdown, the transition to WFH, and remain productive and secure. Their customers faced a complex and confusing response from the MSPs and VARs.

The IDC Market Perspective “Impact on COVID-19 Managed Services: Accelerating vendor strategies in Moving to a Marketplace World” provides a view of “the types and capabilities that managed services providers (SPs), and outsourcers are using in response to COVID-19 in support of enterprises as they navigate through a very difficult time.”

In response to COVID-19, I found that certain aspects of VAR and MSP responsibilities had been altered. They have:

• Network monitoring has been increased
• Increased social engineering and phishing training
• Increased communication with clients about security and attacks

I reached out to Ben Niernberg (Executive Vice President at MNJ Technologies) to learn more about how MSP and VAR companies responded. This technology and managed service provider focuses on helping midmarket businesses increase productivity and simplify their IT systems.

Who was your customer base?

Our client base includes local and national governments, private universities, and fortune 500 companies.

What were your customers’ driving forces before COVID-19 was implemented?

Our drivers had a mission before COVID. They were there to help our clients show value from IT and services. This could be improved security, data flow, operational needs, and comparing OPEX and CAPEX models. We provided education and consulting on how the cloud could help our clients achieve their business goals.

How have your portfolios changed since COVID-19?

We have customers who have closed their doors with the hope that they will reopen when the COVID storm passes. While we have added COVID-specific products to our portfolio, the majority of it have remained unchanged. What our clients want from our portfolio has changed, or been prioritized differently.

What have been the driving forces for your customers ever since COVID-19

COVID has maintained its main focus, with telecommuting and cloud migrations our primary focuses. Our clients are shown value in IT by us. It is easier to show value today than ever before, but technology has made it more important. Remote work and helping our clients get the best productivity from their employees with telecommuting, video calling, and moving applications into the cloud for faster access and greater infrastructure speed. WFH has expanded its portfolio of securities to protect network users and network connections.

Have your customers changed?

The base has largely remained the same. Everyone is still experiencing the same problems, issues, and questions. Some markets have performed better than others, and we have taken some steps to improve our relationship with them. COVID has placed more demand/pressure on certain markets, including transportation, finance, supply chain, and transport.

What are your customers’ current challenges?

The main challenge was getting clients to work remotely. It was important to ensure that communication, data, and access were available from remote locations. It was not always done in this way. Our success in COVID was largely due to our ability to educate our clients and show them that there are many ways we can address their business needs.

COVID lingering longer than anyone expected, so we are now addressing the challenge of how to make remote workers stable and scalable in the future. We also needed to ensure that the solutions we developed are adaptable to whatever comes next.

Is the customer’s security interest increased?

But business survival is paramount. Security has been a priority (100%) since the beginning, but it is even more important now. Clients are asking how to protect themselves in an age when the majority, if not all of their workforce, is located far away. You need to be able to identify, detect and eradicate any threat. There are more vulnerabilities now, and everyone should be looking inward to see if there is an internal threat that might have slipped in. Data is the new currency. In 2020, we saw a greater push to improve or increase security.

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