Treat Your Infrastructure Partner as an Asset, Not a Cost Item
Knowledge blog
For seventeen years, I worked at MSPs myself, both at large organizations (such as KPN) and smaller ones (such as Proxsys). During those years, I mapped out customers’ needs and growth plans and thought strategically about which infrastructure partner (ISP) would be the best fit. That experience taught me one thing above all: the more critical you are of your infrastructure partner, and the earlier and more closely you involve them, the more that partner can deliver for you. So I know from my own experience what it feels like to sit across the table from an ISP. From my current role, I now look at that same relationship from the other side, and I wish every MSP had that perspective.
Almost every MSP I talk to says the same thing: we don’t want a supplier, we want a partner who thinks along with us about growth, security, compliance, and AI. Completely understandable, since I had that same expectation myself for years. But what strikes me now is that many MSPs still set up the relationship in a transactional way themselves.
Conversations revolve around price per unit, and the ISP only hears about a new customer case once the capacity should really have been delivered yesterday. This is partly because infrastructure choices were, for a long time, a purely technical decision involving only the infrastructure specialist. From my current role, I see how many opportunities both parties miss by working this way.
Because of market developments, and because infrastructure and resources are now a decisive factor for growth, security, and AI ambitions, an infrastructure choice has increasingly become a strategic decision. That means it’s not an infrastructure specialist who should be at the table, but an infrastructure partner.
The underestimated asset: the infrastructure partner
The pressure on MSPs is increasing from two sides. On the one hand, end customers expect strategic advice on security, compliance, and AI; on the other, margins on standard managed services are shrinking.
At first glance, these two developments seem unrelated, but they converge on one point: infrastructure. Security advice stands or falls with an environment that is demonstrably secure. Compliance advice stands or falls with a supplier that can provide the right reports and guarantees. And AI advice stands or falls with the computing power and capacity to actually run those services. Infrastructure is therefore no longer just an operational precondition, but the place where your end customer’s strategic expectations ultimately land. That makes the choice of your infrastructure partner a strategic decision, not just a procurement question.
A practical example: a tender with strict requirements around data sovereignty or NIS2. You can gather all the documentation yourself, or you can bring in your ISP. A good partner doesn’t just send over the right certificates, but also thinks along about how to explain this to the auditor or the end customer.
The same applies to AI, although the uncertainty here is even greater. Almost every MSP is experimenting with AI-driven services, but no one knows exactly what their portfolio will look like in two years, and that’s precisely why thinking ahead matters more here than ever. The choices you make about infrastructure today determine how much room you have to maneuver tomorrow.
Buying infrastructure as a one-off order ignores that uncertainty: computing power, latency, and capacity that are sufficient today can become a limitation tomorrow for a service you hadn’t yet foreseen. My advice: share that uncertainty with your infrastructure partner, instead of only involving them at the next order. Don’t just ask for capacity, but for an environment that grows modularly with you, so you can scale up and down as your AI portfolio takes shape. That way, you’re not just buying capacity, but also the ability to move with your business. That’s the difference between an environment that grows with your portfolio and one you’ll have outgrown within two years.
The question I always used to ask myself
But how do you know whether your infrastructure partner can handle that role? As an MSP, I had one simple question, and I think MSPs should ask it more often, including of us: what would you do differently in our current environment? The answer to that question says more about the nature of the relationship than any contract does. A supplier reasons from the current contract and sends a quote for more of the same.
A partner reasons from your future: they first ask questions about your end customers, your roadmap, your growth plans, and only then dare to take a position, even if the conclusion is that you’re taking too much or too little somewhere. That critical, engaged thinking isn’t just pleasant, it’s the foundation of a strategic partnership. You only get it from a party that ties its own long-term interest to yours, rather than to the next order.
The same logic applies on a smaller scale, in the signals you encounter every day. During an incident, do you get someone on the line who understands the impact for your end customer, or do you become a ticket number in a queue? Does your partner proactively think along about capacity and new technology, or do you only hear from them at the annual contract renewal? Both questions essentially test the same thing: does this party look beyond the current moment, or only as far as the next invoice?
Set higher standards, and give your partner the chance to meet them
My message to MSPs is therefore twofold. Be more critical of your infrastructure partner, and treat that choice as the strategic decision it has now become. You promise your end customers quality, so expect that same quality from the party that supplies your infrastructure. But also give that partner the chance to deliver on it, by involving them earlier and more closely.
This article is the first in a series in which Worldstream discusses current themes from the MSP market ahead of MSP Global eind oktober in Barcelona at the end of October.