Summary Bullets:
• Wholesale MSP: VirtualPlatform will join a growing trend of Aussie companies white labeling ICT services to MSPs, leveraging APIs for automation of some services.
• Mid-Market Play: This approach, while not new, benefits from improved automation and has seen success in the mid-market – something larger telcos may want to replicate.
This week, a new competitor in the Australian MSP space, VirtualPlatform, announced its official launch. However, rather than compete directly with other MSPs, the company plans to function like a wholesale platform for other MSPs, opting for a 100% channel play. The company plans to offer voice (SIP/CTS), connectivity (services form nbn, Telstra, and AAPT), Microsoft365 licensing, cloud and data center infrastructure-as-a-service, backup-as-a-service, DNS and SSL for webhosting, SMS services, and a fax-to-email service.
In one way, this is not new. In 2020, Aussie Broadband launched its ‘Carbon’ platform, a similar platform for ordering and management of internet and business services targeted at MSPs and other wholesale partners. The company offers self-ordering, provisioning, and management of its own fiber as well as nbn connectivity services alongside cloud infrastructure, PBX, VPNs, firewalls, and SD-WAN from Meraki.
Going back further, HostedNetwork launched its 100% channel-led MSP offerings in 2013. Initially focused on cloud services like desktop-as-a-service, the company has continued to evolve its wholesale offerings to its MSP partners. It has constructed a backbone network with PoPs across Australian capital cities and now offers a broad range of telco and IT services from MPLS to cloud infrastructure and network security. Most recently, the company partnered with Sophos to offer its MSP customers access to a connectivity products bundled with Sophos’ managed detection and response. This follows a tie-up in April 2023 with nbn to promote its use of business-grade services that integrate with HostedNetworks platform through API.
What these wholesale MSP platforms have in common is a wrap with a white label portal that leverages the use of APIs to drive service ordering, provisioning, and management automation for telco and IT services. Improvements in network automation and the increased use of APIs by ICT vendors to expose solutions enable deeper integration of services across domains as well as easier provisioning and management. These wholesale MSPs use this automated platform, paired with investments in network and vendor relationships, to engage a channel community most finely tuned on the small to medium-sized business market.
The telco and IT services mid-market has been a challenging one for some of the largest players in Australia. Companies like Telstra, TPG, and Vocus have been losing market share in business broadband to smaller re-sellers. While some, like Telstra are trying to change this trend by restarting channel programs with a more targeted approach, the larger players should consider building white label platforms with automation under the hood. While VirtualPlatform is still new, Aussie Broadband now has 425 MSP partners using its Carbon platform, and this channel led to addition of over 50,000 new business broadband customers in the calendar year of 2022. Meanwhile, HostedNetworks boasts an MSP community of over 250 partners and continually adds new capabilities as well as customer success stories. The largest telcos already have wholesale connectivity businesses as well as major partnerships with leading IT and cloud vendors. Leveraging AI and service automation could be the next step in re-engaging the channel and re-gaining traction in the mid-market.