COMMENTARY: The MSP market is booming, and all indications point to more growth in the years ahead. According to Canalys, MSP revenue is expected to grow 13% in 2025, “as outsourcing trends continue and end-customers look for more comprehensive risk management and cost optimization.”
In other words, it’s a great time to be an MSP. But in my experience, MSPs are often underserved and deprioritized by the software vendors that service them, which can lead to miscommunication and hinder their overall success.
As IT becomes more and more commoditized, MSPs need partners that are firmly committed to their growth to help them differentiate themselves, innovate, and drive successful businesses in the coming years. Here are a few ways that MSPs can see even greater success in 2025 and beyond as they look to partner with more collaborative software vendors and invest in authentic relationships to differentiate services and offerings while capitalizing on growing market demand.
Look for vendors that connect you with a solid ecosystem
In 2025, MSPs need more than technology vendors; they need trusted partners. Especially as wallet share collapses and MSPs look to consolidate toolkits, it’s important to find vendors who take an agnostic approach to innovation and driving MSP success.
At our company, we often say that we want MSPs to buy the best products, even if they’re not our products. I think more organizations should take that approach. MSPs should look for partners that always give them the best options on the market.
As a software vendor, there is great power in understanding when to build versus when to partner. Partnerships and integrations can serve as huge differentiators for MSPs’ businesses, and not everything needs to be or should be built in-house. In fact, a lot of times, vendors will add even more value to their MSP customers if they have the discipline and humility to know when to build versus partner.
Particularly as more MSPs look to rein in tool sprawl and curb IT spend, it’ll be important to work with organizations that bring industry-leading products and integrations directly to them – instead of those upcharging for subpar products that are bundled into core offerings and built in-house. MSPs get more value out of the partnerships that prioritize them long term – the ones that connect them directly to the services and solutions that they need to differentiate themselves and better their own business. That's the crux of a true ecosystem approach.
Partner with organizations that invest in your success
A great way for vendors to lose MSPs as customers is to charge extra for essentials that should be baked into offerings from the start – like security. Up-charging for single sign-on (SSO) –the so-called “SSO tax” – is a great example of companies charging for a critical security capability that requires very little cost or effort to build. MSPs should look for partners who don't charge extra for capabilities that don’t take real engineering power to sustain them.
Also, it’s important for MSPs to prioritize partnerships with vendors who understand how they work. For example, in the same way that MSPs operate 24/7 – always servicing and fielding a wide array of client tickets and requests – they'll be better prepared with partners who have 24/7 service and support as well. The days of 12+ hour response times from IT vendors are long gone. Today, if vendors aren’t getting back to MSPs within 60 minutes or less, they’re missing the mark.
Since MSP revenue is often month-to-month and can change with little notice based on client demand, they should look to work with partners who provide month-to-month billing. And since IT teams and organizations at large are being challenged to do more with less, those same vendors should know that it’s even more essential that MSPs are getting maximum value out of their technical offerings and innovations every step of the way.
Leverage the power of community
Lastly, MSPs should be given a space to better themselves. In technology, the ground is always moving, especially for MSPs (who tend to be early adopters).
In 2025 and beyond, MSPs should be even more diligent in looking for true partners and vendors who are invested in finding new ways to help the MSP community grow, not just as prospects and potential customers, but also as individual IT professionals and business owners. For example, vendors shouldn’t gatekeep education, training, or enablement behind a paywall.
Unfortunately, radical transparency and authenticity have become less and less commonplace in the vendor market. With more pressure being placed on MSPs, there needs to be an even higher expectation on software vendors, as well.
For MSPs looking to raise the bar in 2025, my advice is to be selective about who you partner with and prioritize the relationships with organizations that take an ecosystem approach and innovate and grow with your interests at the top of their minds. If MSPs are expected to deliver exceptional everything in the year ahead, your vendors should be rising to meet that same challenge.
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