Enterprise Cloud FEATURED ARTICLE

The connection between end users (the customers like the individuals reading this article and the businesses that purchase IT services) and service providers has long been a direct one. Service providers use their own servers and equipment to offer services such as video streaming or access to Wi-Fi hotspots. Customers then build their own applications or use a third party application to make their way to what the service provider has offered.

This relationship extends itself beyond the two-entity format when a managed service provider (MSP) gets involved. Instead of handling the equipment on their own, businesses can seek out a MSP that already has the servers in place to allow businesses that wish to offer their own services to relay those managed offerings in their own names. As such, the MSP remains hidden but plays an integral part by holding onto much of the responsibility for server maintenance and service updates. This type of situation can involve both business-to-consumer and business-to-business relationships. It can also take another turn toward complexity when relationships like the one between ADTRAN (News - Alert) (a provider of networking services) and MSPs make their own partnerships.

ADTRAN just released its new ProCloud Subscription Services package which works as a type of managed service for MSPs. ADTRAN offers its MSP clients a connection network switch and Wi-Fi routing IT services – a so-called network-as-a-service – and MSPs then offer those services to their own customers.

MSPs gain a number of benefits with this new package. First, they can use the ProCloud software to get an overview of all the devices that are connected across their networks. The management software can show which devices link to each end user and where any issues may exist regarding bottlenecks or other network headaches. MSPs also gain the ability to offer subscriptions to their end users because the ProCloud Subscription Services package lends itself to a pay-as-you-go type of usage model. MSPs only need to boost their own subscriptions with ADTRAN when their customers’ usage begins to force greater delivery up the chain of command.

ADTRAN noted that this type of chained offering of services ultimately benefits MSPs because they can worry less about maintaining their own infrastructure and more about handling customer concerns. With a link to ProCloud Subscription Services, MSPs let ADTRAN handle both server and software upgrades which, as ADTRAN pointed out, is critical to the peak performance of end users’ Ethernet switches and Wi-Fi routers. Meggin Sawyer, in particular, mentioned her company’s essential nature in this chain as the vice president of business solutions and cloud services at ADTRAN.

“[We] will continue to build off of our successful leadership with a monthly subscription model for switches and Wi-Fi,” Sawyer said before noting her company’s burgeoning relationship with Speros, a key partner that will help ADTRAN bring this launch to market. This latest release from ADTRAN had the potential to grow into something more than just support for switches, though that platform carries a lot of weight. It may extend into a whole fleet of support for nearly any type of service that MSP have long had to manage on their own.