Managed service providers (MSPs) globally find themselves in a challenging environment where intense competition and the commoditization of bandwidth have increasingly made it difficult to achieve and maintain profitability.

As connectivity technologies have grown, the demand for network services has soared, leading to a proliferation of MSPs offering similar services. This saturation has created a highly competitive market where differentiation is hard, resulting in a “pricing to the bottom” race and shrinking profit margins. Furthermore, the commoditization of bandwidth has lowered the perceived value of network services, making it harder for MSPs to justify premium pricing.

To survive and thrive in this environment, MSPs must adapt their business models, differentiate themselves through value-added services, and find innovative ways to deliver superior customer experiences.

AI & ML Capabilities Are Necessary for SD-WAN

As organizations try to reduce network outages, improve network performance, optimize costs, improve operational efficiencies, and increase end-user satisfaction, they are hungry for innovative solutions with improved analytics and reporting for SD-WAN.

This is where add-on services like artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps), AI-powered intelligent WAN analytics, and reporting available on Prisma SD-WAN play a crucial role.

MSPs can differentiate themselves, deliver enhanced customer value, and generate additional revenue opportunities with value-added services that provide:

• deep WAN insights and trend analysis into application and network performance
• network optimization opportunities
• capacity planning

These add-on services help MSPs improve customer experience and stickiness to improve profitability and help ensure long-term success in a margin-squeezed WAN connectivity landscape.

Leveraging AIOps for Proactive Network Management

According to a 2022 Gartner Market Guide for AIOps Platforms, “AIOps continues its growth and influence on the overall ITOM market, with a projected market size of about $2.1 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 19%.”

Prisma SD-WAN provides native AIOps and reporting capabilities and deep integration into the SASE API Gateway enabling MSPs to offer predictive network monitoring and management, root cause analysis, incident management automated remediation, and the ML-driven capabilities of event correlation and analysis with policy control. This enables MSPs to detect and address potential issues before they impact their customers’ operations.

How Can MSPs Monetize AIOps?

• AIOps as a Managed Service packages AIOps capabilities as a value-added service, and providing customers with proactive monitoring, real-time alerts, and automated incident management. This not only enhances customer satisfaction but also creates a recurring revenue stream for MSPs.
• Performance Optimization Consultancy uses AIOps insights to identify performance bottlenecks and recommend network optimizations and consultancy services to customers. Furthermore, becoming the customer’s trusted advisor to maximize the value of their network infrastructure investments.
• Enhanced AIOps and Reporting Capabilities around applications offer application-centric SLAs including monitoring, rapid issue resolution, and optimized performance ensuring customers experience enhanced application reliability and responsiveness backed by service level guarantees.

Unleashing the Power of Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics leverages historical data and machine learning algorithms to forecast future network behavior, capacity requirements, and potential performance issues. By harnessing this capability within Prisma SD-WAN, MSPs can offer customers unparalleled visibility into their network’s future needs.

How can MSPs monetize predictive analytics?

• Capacity Planning Services use predictive analytics to forecast network capacity requirements and offer customer Capacity Planning Services proactively identifying potential bottlenecks or underutilized resources, MSPs can help customers optimize their network infrastructure, improve performance, and reduce costs.
• Upselling Bandwidth Upgrades use predictive analytics to identify customers who may soon outgrow their current bandwidth requirements. MSPs can also proactively offer upgrade recommendations to stay ahead of network demands. This opens up opportunities for upselling higher bandwidth packages and generating additional revenue.

Delivering Actionable Capacity Reports

Capacity reports provide customers with insights into their network utilization, traffic patterns, and application performance. By leveraging Prisma SD-WAN's capacity reporting capabilities, MSPs can deliver actionable reports that help customers optimize their network resources.

How Can MSPs Monetize Actionable Reports?

• Capacity Optimization Services use capacity reports to identify underutilized resources, network congestion points, and potential optimization opportunities. MSPs can offer consultancy services to their customers, guiding them on network optimization strategies and helping them achieve maximum efficiency.
• Customized Reporting Packages tailor capacity reports to meet customers' specific needs and preferences. MSPs can offer customized reporting packages with in-depth insights into network performance, application usage, and bandwidth utilization. This creates additional value for customers and sets managed services apart from competitors.

The Time to Monetize Your Managed SD-WAN Solutions Is Now

For MSPs, monetizing AIOps, predictive analytics, and capacity reports from Prisma SD-WAN presents an excellent opportunity to drive revenue growth and deliver exceptional customer value.

By leveraging these capabilities, MSPs can offer proactive:

• network management
• performance optimization consultancy
• capacity planning services
• upselling opportunities
• customized reporting packages

Furthermore, embracing the power of these technologies helps position MSPs as trusted advisors, and unlock new avenues for profitability and customer success.

Learn why Palo Alto Networks has been recognized as the Only Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Single-Vendor SASE, and a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Single-Vendor SASE, By Andrew Lerner, Jonathan Forest, Neil MacDonald, Nat Smith, Charlie Winckless, 16 August 2023

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