The increasingly complex cloud landscape provides opportunities for MSPs to present themselves as indispensable transformation partners, according to Liz Brown, Director of Enterprise Cloud Solutions Practice, Colt Technology Services. Talking to IT Europa ahead of its upcoming High Growth 50: Cloud report, she discussed which strategic levers the channel should pull to combat heightened concerns about compliance, security, efficiency and cost.
Colt has evolved from offering traditional hosting environments to hybrid cloud solutions. “This has been driven by the need to balance the advantages of public cloud, such as scalability and cost-effectiveness, with concerns around security and data sovereignty, especially given the current geopolitical climate,” she said. “Businesses are looking for ways to maintain flexibility while ensuring control over their data.”
At the forefront of this complexity is regulatory pressures, geopolitical concerns and cyber resilience, all driving enterprises to increasingly prioritise data sovereignty. “This presents both challenges and opportunities for MSPs,” Brown said: “Offerings need to be adapted to meet local data residency, and the MSPs that can deliver flexible, scalable, and compliant sovereign solutions will become strategic partners for enterprises navigating complex multi-cloud and regulatory landscapes.”
To achieve this, she recommends that MSPs prioritise building sovereign-ready architectures when designing cloud environments while investing in automation to ensure agility and control in dynamic environments. To become a trusted service provider, leaders need to build strategic partnerships to deliver regionally compliant services built on consulting and advisory capabilities to help customers navigate their journeys. “MSPs need to evolve across several dimensions—technical, operational, and strategic,” she noted.
Whilst sovereignty demands are increasingly driving a preference for private cloud particularly in those industries handling sensitive data, hybrid models are very common as businesses still value public cloud environments, according to Brown. She highlighted: “We see a blended approach whereby public cloud is used for experimentation and private cloud is used for production workloads that require sovereignty, resilience and cost control.”
Therefore, public cloud demand is still inevitable to hit scalability and innovation criteria for customers. However, the nature of public cloud itself has changed.
Colt itself has a focus on AWS, Microsoft Azure and GCP when it comes to providing public cloud solutions to customers. “This is a fundamental part of our strategy,” she said, setting forth some recommendations for MSPs looking to position themselves as trusted multi-cloud partners. “MSPs can navigate cost fears by delivering cross-cloud FinOps and cost optimisation, providing real-time cost visibility and forecasting and recommending cost-saving strategies,” she said.
Brown also recommends offering centralised management across multiple cloud platforms, optimising workload placement and ensuring consistent governance and security policies. She underlines the need for MSPs to offer consultancy services, providing advisory and assessment services and choosing the right cloud for each workload.
Notice that underlying both action plans for hybrid cloud and sovereign cloud is consultancy. Brown is an advocate for meeting customers where they are on their cloud journey and opening up mutual understanding of needs and complexities. She said: “Strategic consultancy services enable Colt to help customers determine where workloads should run, assisting with implementing controls for compliance, resiliency, and security. We can also guide clients through frameworks like DORA, GDPR and ISO 27001.”
MSP’s value-add power
Elaborating on how MSPs are perfectly placed in this complex market, Brown elevated the channel’s proximity to AI and security services, both in demand as bedrock for cloud infrastructure. On the former she noted:
“Businesses are harnessing AI within cloud environments to drive automation, efficiency, and new capabilities, and MSPs can position themselves as enablers of scalable and secure transformation.” She recommends that MSPs offer cloud environments tailored for AI workloads. This includes developing AI platforms that provide pre-built models for common use cases or customer model development to support data pipelines and lakes across multi-cloud environments.
Secondly, with evolving regulations and increasing concerns over data protection, ensuring secure cloud environments is a must. “MSPs are uniquely positioned to capitalise on security and compliance becoming a top priority for cloud adoption,” she added, recommending that companies provide modular scalable security solutions including managed firewalls, intrusion detection and endpoint protection, as well as Zero Trust architectures across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. “Embedding security into every layer of cloud architecture, ensuring that security is proactive, not reactive,” she added.
Overall, Colt suggests a cloud offering that is interoperable with the entire suite of digital transformation enablement, so enterprise customers are covered comprehensively, and true strategic partnerships are formed. Brown finished: “By integrating expertise across network, security, cloud, and UC, Colt ensures customers receive full-service solutions rather than just individual product components. This holistic approach strengthens partnerships and drives customer success. Colt aims to be a trusted partner of its customers, understanding their business and helping them to execute meaningful change to solve their business challenges.”
