A particular shout-out and thanks to Russ Atkin for his thought management and invaluable insights on the service creation course of, which impressed the writing of this weblog.
In my earlier weblog, I explored how Cisco ThousandEyes empowers Managed Service Suppliers (MSPs) to ship excellent consumer experiences by offering unparalleled visibility into community and software efficiency. As we proceed to delve deeper into the potential of leveraging ThousandEyes, this weblog will try to offer steering, construction, and finest practices for MSPs to think about as they journey via the method of making or enhancing a service providing round this highly effective device.
Why Digital Expertise Assurance (DXA) Is More and more Essential
The significance of DXA can’t be overstated. In keeping with the survey and evaluation within the 2024 World Tendencies Report, 40% of IT leaders and professionals consider that the community can positively affect buyer and worker experiences, thereby advancing digital enterprise initiatives. Moreover, 75% of those leaders plan to deploy instruments inside the subsequent two years that provide end-to-end visibility through a single console throughout varied community domains. Nonetheless, 35% at the moment lack visibility into full community paths, together with web and cloud networks, and solely 39% have both restricted visibility or full visibility utilizing a number of consoles into digital experiences between customers, gadgets, functions, and providers.
This hole in visibility and the rising complexity of community environments underscore the escalating want for complete DXA options. By addressing these challenges, MSPs can place themselves as indispensable companions of their purchasers’ digital transformation journeys.
The Alternative for MSPs
The pattern in direction of DXA presents a golden alternative for MSPs to face out in a aggressive market. By providing providers that guarantee constantly dependable experiences throughout customers, gadgets, functions, and providers, MSPs can differentiate themselves. With 38% of respondents anticipating their digital expertise assurance to be AI-enabled sooner or later, there’s a clear demand for superior, clever options.
ThousandEyes, with its sturdy observability capabilities, equips MSPs with the important instruments to ship a high-quality expertise. It addresses a wide selection of crucial use instances for contemporary companies, starting from community, and software efficiency monitoring, to consumer expertise, and safety compliance monitoring. By leveraging ThousandEyes’ end-to-end visibility and complete efficiency insights, MSPs can proactively resolve points, optimize community efficiency, and enhance total buyer satisfaction. This not solely minimizes downtime and operational disruptions for the shopper, but in addition positions the MSP as leaders in delivering superior digital experiences.
ThousandEyes Licensing Mannequin
To set the stage for the service creation course of, it’s vital to grasp the licensing elements of ThousandEyes for MSPs trying to combine this highly effective device into their service choices. ThousandEyes licensing is structured round several types of brokers and the consumption related to every. The first license varieties embrace Cloud Brokers, Enterprise Brokers, and Endpoint Brokers, every serving distinct monitoring wants.
- Cloud Brokers: These are globally distributed brokers managed by ThousandEyes, perfect for monitoring external-facing functions and providers. They eat models based mostly on the quantity and frequency of assessments performed.
- Enterprise Brokers: Deployed inside a company’s personal community, these brokers present visibility into inside community efficiency and software supply. Unit consumption for Enterprise Brokers is set by the variety of brokers and the amount of assessments they carry out.
- Endpoint Brokers: Put in on end-user gadgets, these brokers provide insights into the consumer expertise from the endpoint perspective. They’re significantly helpful for monitoring distant workforces and distributed environments. Consumption right here is predicated on the variety of endpoints and the kinds of assessments executed.
ThousandEyes employs a tiered unit consumption mannequin, enabling MSPs to scale their monitoring capabilities in response to their purchasers’ wants. Every take a look at sort—comparable to HTTP server assessments, web page load assessments, transaction assessments, and community assessments—consumes a particular variety of models. The frequency and complexity of those assessments additional affect unit consumption. As an illustration, extra frequent or advanced assessments will eat extra models.
This tiered strategy ensures that MSPs can choose the suitable degree of service for his or her purchasers, whether or not they want primary monitoring or complete, enterprise-grade options. By understanding and leveraging this versatile licensing construction, MSPs can successfully handle prices, customise their service providing, whereas delivering high-value providers tailor-made to the particular necessities of their clients.
Creating a brand new ThousandEyes managed providers providing includes a number of key steps and issues. To assist MSPs perceive the service creation course of and the associated thought course of, let’s evaluation the method at a excessive degree:
- Assess Present Companies and Buyer Demographics:
- Assessment present providers to determine gaps and alternatives for enhancement with ThousandEyes.
- Perceive the shopper base, together with business challenges, service combine, and goal buyer profiles.
- Brainstorm/Ideation of Enhanced Capabilities:
- Conduct brainstorming classes to combine enhanced capabilities and customer-focused outcomes into the service choices.
- Think about a “Good-Higher-Finest” strategy to handle varied market segments.
- Design a Tiered Service Mannequin:
- Develop a tiered service mannequin (e.g. Important, Benefit, Premier) to cater to totally different buyer wants and budgets.
- Every tier ought to provide progressively extra superior options and help.
- Introduce Service Tokens (Optionally available):
- Implement a service token system for ad-hoc actions, permitting clients to pool or carry ahead tokens for versatile service consumption.
- Tokens can characterize a greenback worth or unit of labor and be supplied as a part of the month-to-month cost.
- The service catalog ought to specify the amount of tokens required for varied actions, giving clients a price range for ad-hoc duties with out the necessity for buy orders or requisitions.
- This strategy can streamline service supply and improve buyer comfort.
- Develop a Enterprise Case:
- Create a complete enterprise case, together with a Service Duty Matrix (SRM) for every service tier.
- Undertake finest practices by clearly defining and scaling the service tiers to fulfill various buyer wants.
Beneath is an instance of service tiers for a ThousandEyes managed providers providing. Use this as a place to begin and customise the providing based mostly on aims:
- Important Tier: Fundamental CloudApp availability monitoring, commonplace synthetics (Net-HTTP & Community-Server), automated notifications of service degradation, and 60-minute testing frequency.
- Benefit Tier: Consists of all Important options, real-user monitoring for one web site/net app, agent-less deployment, automated anomaly notifications, and advisory help throughout enterprise hours.
- Premier Tier: Consists of all Benefit options, customized app monitoring with common well being checks, enhanced help and root trigger identification, full workflow instrumentation, and dependency observability for third-party providers.
Key issues within the service providing ought to embrace buyer interplay, scalability, integration with present buyer infrastructure, and sturdy help choices comparable to a 24/7 assist desk and technical help.
Develop a advertising and gross sales technique by figuring out and concentrating on particular buyer segments that will profit most from the ThousandEyes managed providers. Clearly articulate the worth proposition of every service tier and acknowledge the necessity to practice the gross sales staff on the options and advantages of the brand new service providing, enabling them to grasp the important thing variations between the brand new service providing vs. every other conventional instruments, monitoring capabilities, and/or present service choices.
Lastly, concentrate on suggestions and steady enchancment by recurrently accumulating and analyzing buyer suggestions to enhance the service. Monitor key efficiency indicators (KPIs) to make sure the service meets buyer expectations, and constantly refine and improve the service based mostly on suggestions and out there metrics.
Seizing the Alternative: Remodeling MSP Service Choices with ThousandEyes for Final result-Primarily based Success
By adopting a structured strategy, MSPs can efficiently develop and launch a brand new ThousandEyes managed providers providing that aligns with buyer wants and generates extra income. Using ThousandEyes is a major step in direction of embracing digital enterprise assurance, remodeling reactive, infrastructure-based operations into proactive, data-driven providers. Managed observability supplies deep insights into consumer experiences by correlating telemetry knowledge, delivering worthwhile enterprise outcomes. By understanding buyer demographics and desired outcomes, MSPs can design options that increase present gives, unlocking extra worth for patrons and positioning themselves to capitalize on the rising observability market.
Have interaction your Cisco Account Govt or Gross sales Enterprise Growth Supervisor for a collaborative journey via the service creation course of.
Extra Assets:
- Go to the Cisco Associate Managed Companies SalesConnect web page for recordings of earlier MS VoE classes
- Try my newest blogs for insights into Managed Companies alternatives for MSPs
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