MSPs are finding that there has been so much talk of the “Cloud” lately that perceptions are becoming somewhat hazy. Take for example Microsoft’s latest commercials, where “to the cloud” means anything but cloud computing – Microsoft presents the cloud as a place to edit photos, record TV shows and other desktop tasks – it’s all a little bit ridiculous. Ultimately, Microsoft is marginalizing MSPs by misinforming the public.

Allow me to digress – MSPs have always faced challenges in selling managed services to the business market, where the initial perception was that businesses would be giving up control of their PCs/Servers and infrastructure to an external entity, that lived somewhere out in the ether – a scary thought for many business managers. Add to the suspicions of IT departments, that thought managed service providers were only there to take their jobs and reduce overhead, and the adoption of managed services became non-tenable.

That made things very hard for MSPs in the early days, dealing with suspicion and hostility made sales difficult at best, impossible at worst. However, savvy managed service providers struck back with case studies, proof of ROI and most importantly, removing the burden of some difficult IT operations from a business for a small monthly fee. Some managed service providers struck gold with that formula and were able to gain traction in the enterprise.

Nonetheless, challenges still remain, especially in the SMB and SOHO markets, where business owners don’t want to give up control and are suspicious about the safety of their data. Unfortunately, it is going to take a hard sell to get many of those stalwarts to consider using an MSP, and Microsoft is adding insult to injury with those cute commercials – now in the minds of many, the cloud (which once was the key word for selling managed services) is a free, friendly place to dawdle and play.

To move ahead MSPs are going to need to focus less on the cloud and talk tangible services instead – promoting features, capabilities and service levels, instead of infrastructure – banning the word cloud from the sales conversation. While there is no sure-fire way to sell managed services, one formula still seems to hold the most promise – demonstrating how much it costs not to use a managed service. Simply put, add up all the tangible costs (hardware, software, man hours) needed to perform a service in house with all of the non-tangible costs (productivity, user satisfaction, cachet) to show the real costs of self service vs. a hosted (or managed) solution.

Digging through all of the FUD (fear, un-certainty, doubt) is going to be the only way for MSPs to tackle what may be the largest market yet – the world of the SMB.