Yes, the cloud world is heating up. And an even more resounding yes to the marketing world heating up - even more? And for the cloud-focused IT Solutions Provider it's a double whammy!! How the hell is a cloud-focused IT Solutions Provider going to execute on this new world of marketing (let's call it marketing 2.0 for the heck of it) required to add great recurring revenue cloud business?

There is all of a sudden a lot of hoopla around the "ModernMSP" - the latest title being applied to what many been calling the CSP or CSB or next-gen MSP. From what I can see the teams at Microsoft and BitTitan (and maybe others) are leading the charge here - and I like it - seems fitting to me.  But that's a title only - the vast, vast majority of IT Solutions Providers are not ModernMSPs - they just aren't - not even close. The vast majority of IT Solutions providers aren't even MSPs let alone ModernMSPs - although many call themselves MSPs. But that's all OK. Simple definition of a ModenMSP - a "cloud-first" IT Solutions Provider that is making their business from cloud - how's that for simple.

Remember my MSP 101 blog walking through why and how the MSP model came about? A large reason why was the fact that the end customer (the 25 person law firm as an example) needed more smart tech staff/brains to help with the ever increasingly complex technology they were utilizing to run their business. It made no financial sense for the law firm to have all these smart and expensive staff on their payroll so they outsourced to an MSP that had economies of scale. Remember?