Today's enterprises don't much care about the intricacies involved in the cloud service delivery model for mid-sized and large service providers. The bottom line for companies looking to outsource their IT needs is whether they can get the broad range of services they need, which largely includes security, management, orchestration and automation.

Most managed service providers (MSPs) have already solidified their service offerings using a virtualized infrastructure and with some elements of automation included. But now is the time to add unique service offerings to that solid infrastructure, and those offerings are going to be the differentiators in an ever-growing sea of cloud competitors. By basing those services around four crucial core requirements - security, management, automation and orchestration - service providers can ensure their customers' and prospective customers' needs are being met.

TMC (News - Alert) hosted a webinar this week to help service providers develop high-margin offerings, pricing and service levels in order to get ahead of their competitors. “Don't Get Stuck in the Cloud” featured presenter Antonio Piraino, CTO of ScienceLogic, and was moderated by Charles Weaver (News - Alert), CEO and co-founder of the MSPAlliance.

One of the most important elements for today's service providers seeking to take their offerings to the next level, is to do away with traditional constraints and find new ways to introduce and manage their services, as well as monetize them. Important components of today's service packages include provisioning and management of service level agreements (SLAs) as well as monetizing the management of core services.

Customers want to be assured that not only is their precious data being managed efficiently and at a satisfactory level of quality, they want assurances that security needs are being met as well. And they want the management tools to be able to easily stay on top of their outsourced processes in addition to receiving automated reports and updates so they may stay on top of the entire IT process.

Service providers can easily and cost effectively add all of these elements to their core offerings, and doing so will not only differentiate them from their competitors, but it will help them with their internal management and monitoring processes. These value-added differentiators are an absolute must for any service provider looking to take their offerings to the next level of quality and assurance.

For any decision makers at mid-sized and large MSPs and hosting companies who wish to roll out high-margin cloud and other service offerings without creating organizational and management difficulties for themselves and their customers, incorporating these four core services into their offerings is essential.