This week, I’ve seen a few really interesting articles about IT spending that almost contradict themselves. An eWeek Channel email newsletter I received had links to two interesting articles (one placed directly on top of the other) “IT Distributors Say Economy is Hurting” and “MSP Sales Getting Easier” which made me laugh, given the placement (I assume it wasn’t intentional). But they both reflect a trend I see rising in the channel – the maturation of managed services and the lack of participation by big box manufacturers like Cisco, Dell and HP.

Where I think each of these companies do have some sort of story to tell (or perhaps strategy being formed as we speak, as is clearly the case with Dell), it is not geared towards the channel. And given their large enterprise roots, they are all having their challenges addressing the small to medium enterprise space (one reason: price doesn’t scale backwards very well). That’s exactly why the smaller, more personal regional MSP’s and MSSP’s will continue to find success in their respective markets.

As for the distribution article, Ingram Micro’s Justin Crotty and the Seismic program have proven they are ahead of the changing landscape (full disclosure: we are an Ingram Micro Seismic vendor partner). For the past several years, there has been talk about VAR’s moving into more service-oriented business models, but no real movement – it was just too costly and many people were spending way too much time overthinking the model. I believe some of the softening we see on the hardware/software sales side is actually being picked up on the services side and we’ll continue to see that grow. After all, in tough economic times, when a company starts tightening the belt, are they going to spend more capital or reduce costs? I hate to use the word “outsourcing” (I like “co-sourcing” better) but in this case, I have to. If you outsource anything, what comes to mind? Well, technologies and tasks that require a high cost of overhead and investment would take a pole position if it were my business. Why waste time on doing mundane tasks that can be done by a qualified partner at a much lower cost to my business? Why not leverage my existing resources more strategically than having them do dirty work like helpdesk, printer management or (beware, shameless plug follows) sifting through false positives and watching your security posture 24×7? Can you afford not to get the most out of your employees?

In the most recent VAR Business issue, the cover story “How To Navigate the New MSP Landscape” basically talks about differentiating oneself in a competitive market. For the most part, that’s nothing new. But it brings up some great points when it comes to any business, especially a smaller player in the market. Things like selling the value of your services (not the price!), finding the right partner and not trying to do everything yourself, moving beyond the fundamental mainstream services (like break fix) and not forgetting the personal touch with the customer. How can the big boys realistically compete with that?