I just responded to Joe Panettieri's blog over at MSP Mentor about a study just published by Techaisle which preditcts a "rise to a new set of Distributors namely, Managed Services Distributors (MSDs) who provide a standard platform and service models to VARs"

For the full story:  http://www.mspmentor.net/2008/09/24/rise-of-the-managed-services-distributor/

My Post:

I never thought “Master MSP” was broad enough to describe what we here at MSPSN do because the name itself implies that all you are is a big MSP, and really the term has been reduced down to mean that if you are a Master MSP you are simply sharing your extra monitoring tool licenses with other MSPs. 

When I was at Breakaway last month I did a quick video thing with Autotask which included a “live” Q&A session.  When they asked me to describe exactly what MSPSN does, what came out of my mouth was that we were really more like a value added distributor, someone who aggregates services and solutions for VARs/SPs/MSPs/Etc.  We pull proven profitable Managed Services offerings together from the different top tier MSP vendors and manufactures and deliver those solutions to our partners, who in turn deliver them to their end users.  Finally, there is hope in getting rid of the “Master MSP” moniker, and we have a term that more closely describes what we do!

Amy Luby
www.mspsn.com
aluby at mspsn dot com