'Managed service providers are now legacy' - IBM partner CSI
Simon Payne explains why the firm has rebranded itself as an 'enterprise performance partner'
The term 'managed service provider' has become so ubiquitous that anybody can claim the title just by offering a smattering of services, according to CSI CEO Simon Payne.
IBM partner CSI has rebranded itself as an "enterprise performance partner (EPP)" in order to differentiate itself in an increasingly crowded MSP space.
Payne explained that cloud is the next stage in the evolution of the marketplace, which historically involved a client buying and managing an asset themselves, before moving on to having others manage it for them.
"Everybody in the marketplace will call themselves an MSP and that can mean little more than reselling one or two services to the client," he told CRN.
"The next step is cloud and people consuming those services as and when they want them - so effectively a managed service is one step to the cloud. But the real value is managed cloud services.
"We are providing traditional managed services along with a host of managed cloud services."
Payne acknowledges that the rebrand to an EPP could cause confusion around what CSI does, but said that the confusion is deliberate and the description more accurately reflects the service it offers clients.
"An EPP is somebody who is focused on the upper mid-market and enterprise clients and is obsessed with driving outcomes," he explained.
"The whole purpose of the rebrand is to stimulate debate.
"Our industry likes putting people into boxes, and we understand through our six-month research exercise that we didn't fit into the marketplace categories - MSP, VAR, SI - in their truest sense.
"Our clients are demanding a plan to grow, save, innovate and protect their businesses and I believe that MSPs are now legacy and an EPP is what they need.
"If you think about other tags in the channel, an SI's job is to put systems together, a VAR takes somebody else's product and adds value to around it, but a performance partner is somebody who implicitly understands what a business is trying to achieve."
The company has spent the past six months studying the market and its own position in the channel.
Payne emphasised that the rebrand is more than just a new website and description, and that it has rethought its entire proposition.
"This rebrand involved looking at the market and how it defines itself," he explained.
"That's where we noticed that there is a wide-open gap there and we needed to define ourselves in this gap.
"This is not just a rebrand, it is a redefinition of our proposition and go-to-market strategy and I hope it will provide real clarity on what value we bring to the market and what our approach is."
CSI ranked 83 in CRN' s Top VARs 2018, with revenues of £46.4m. It is currently being audited for its most recent fiscal year, and Payne expects turnover to hit £50m-plus, with net profit anticipated to grow around 20 per cent.
"A lot of our revenue growth has been organic," Payne said.
"We have been very successful with taking a host of added-value solutions to our clients and we won a lot of new customers. We are seeing a redirection in the historical product business and a massive increase in cloud consumption."
CSI acquired £15m-revenue generator Niu Solutions last year, and Payne stated that its integration has contributed to the expected revenue growth.
The CEO was coy on whether further acquisitions were in the pipeline, saying only that any acquisition would be around the skills it could add to CSI's portfolio, rather than geographic expansion.
"Our core focus is on organic growth and that is being supported by the stats we have over the last 18 months," he said.
"We are not looking to go in a different direction; any acquisition has to be something that is central to the business that we have today.
"We have a clear go-to-market strategy, a clear target market and now we have very clear branding and market messaging to support that assault on the marketplace."