Managing the Microsoft Experience is an Open Opportunity for MSPs
Partner
Few solutions are more essential to enterprise productivity and collaboration than Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. Microsoft 365 is the second most-used office suite in the world, with a 46% share of the market. Microsoft Teams had more than 320 million monthly active users by the start of 2024 and continues to grow, especially thanks to the integration of Copilot AI and value-adds like Teams Rooms and Teams Phone.
Even though these applications are business-critical, most organizations lack the tools, capabilities or capacity to manage their Microsoft digital experience. The overwhelming majority rely on native Microsoft tools to monitor performance, which provide data after the fact — not proactively — and miss crucial parts of the 365/Teams IT environment including the local enterprise network and the ISP network.
Relying on native Microsoft tools alone can lead to unpredictable, untraceable user-affecting issues such as failed calls, dropped calls and meetings, and poor quality — with an estimated cost of at least $573,0002 per business every year in lost productivity and troubleshooting time.
The upshot of all this is there’s a ready market for MSPs willing to step in and fill the gaps. The right software capabilities make that easier than it might sound, opening the door to new, recurring revenue streams and stronger customer relationships.
Three keys to managing the Microsoft digital experience
Because of the limitations of native Microsoft tools, most enterprises have no way of knowing where performance or user experience issues are arising — or how to fix them. Since their IT departments are already overworked and overwhelmed, piling on more responsibilities isn’t a viable answer.
You can help, and your offer can be especially appealing if you promise a few high-value outcomes: a way to get ahead of issues before users are affected; complete, end-to-end visibility; and an objective way to show that enterprise expectations are being met.
To deliver on those, you need three corresponding capabilities: synthetic testing, network path tracing and SLA enforcement.
Synthetic testing
With synthetic testing, you can simulate user behaviors like opening a Teams meeting or uploading documents in Microsoft 365 and detect any ‘soft spots’ in the IT environment that could create issues. Because synthetic testing is automated and happens behind the scenes, without user involvement, it gives you a way to identify and address to potential problems proactively — before application performance is compromised. By setting up a regular, automated regimen of synthetic testing, you can ensure that users enjoy a frictionless Microsoft 365/Teams experience.
Network path tracing
The only way to accurately and confidently determine where issues are occurring is to see the full, end-to-end pathways of Microsoft 365 and Teams and traffic. Since native Microsoft tools are limited to the parts of the environment Microsoft can influence directly, such as endpoints and the Microsoft data center, they can’t provide this kind of visibility. So adopting a solution that can augment those native tools and see the complete picture, including the local network and ISP network, is key.
SLA enforcement
If an enterprise is going to pay you to manage its Microsoft 365/Teams digital experience, it will want to know you’re providing a good return on that investment. You can give that reassurance that by taking advantage of software-driven capabilities to set and uphold SLAs. This will require an integrated, correlated single dashboard that shows 365/Teams performance and how promised thresholds are being met. With the right analytics, you can even keep tabs on how well Microsoft is living up to its own SLAs.
Vantage DX makes Microsoft DEM easy
Martello Vantage DX is the only solution on the market designed expressly for Microsoft 365 and Teams. It provides all the capabilities outlined above — synthetic testing, network path tracing, SLA enforcement and more — making it easy for you to add real value for enterprise clients that rely on Microsoft collaboration applications.
Learn more about what Vantage DX can do for your MSP business by visiting our Martello Partner Network page.
