The urgent need for MSPs to rethink their tech infrastructure – and why platform consolidation (done right) is the next evolution of service delivery
In 2025, the work of a managed service provider (MSP) is more complex than ever. Businesses’ IT estates are growing ever larger and more multifaceted, with a rapidly expanding array of devices, software, apps, and networks to manage, protect, and maintain. Not only that, but flexible and hybrid work have become the norm in many industries and are expanding in others as technology continues to evolve at pace. This adds the challenge of securing and guaranteeing service to devices and users spread across a huge range of locations.
That complexity means the market for MSP solutions is growing: its global worth is projected to exceed $500 billion by 2029 meaning there is a significant market opportunity for MSPs to capitalise on. Done right, MSP offerings can be a huge value driver and cost saver for clients. At the same time, however, MSPs are under unprecedented pressure to scale operations, protect margins, and meet evolving client demands, all while navigating an increasingly fragmented IT stack.
As a result, consolidation is a key concern. MSPs need to be able to quickly, accurately, and reliably operate across multiple parts of the IT estate – which means working towards a single view of all workflows is a critical consideration for many MSPs. The ability to manage a customer’s full IT estate from a single platform doesn’t just streamline operations for the MSP, it unlocks significant differentiation from competitors.
Too many cooks spoil the broth
However, at present, many companies are still far off achieving that goal. Instead, most are operating a patchwork of remote monitoring and management (RMM), professional services automation (PSA), and endpoint tools. This situation is unsustainable for modern MSPs seeking to achieve growth in the market. When agents have to jump between multiple dashboards and systems to resolve a single query, it causes inefficiencies, growing ticket lists, and perceptions of poor service. The patchwork approach also creates an increased risk of duplicated or faulty work, as operating across multiple systems at once heightens the chance of human error.
That’s not the fault of the hard-working agents themselves, but the unwieldy web of solutions they’re having to wrangle. MSPs need to consider alternative solutions to the challenge of increasingly complex IT estates, rather than just letting the platforms pile up.
Edgar Martínez, business manager at EvolutionIT, is a ManageEngine customer – as he explained about MSPs’ needs: ‘We had technicians switching between multiple consoles just to resolve a single client incident—a real drag on time and ticket volume. We were looking for a tool that could bring together everything our team needs without adding complexity or locking us into a rigid stack.’
All in one
In response to this need, purpose-built, all-in-one platforms can reduce operational drag and increase technicians’ productivity. This approach is more sophisticated than merely bundling tools together: rather than simply implementing a selection of related but discrete technologies, MSPs can work from a single, multi-purpose system that enables all key operations to be handled from a single interface.
A unified platform of this sort can enable MSPs to manage day-to-day operations across clients – from technician workflows and asset visibility to endpoint protection and network health monitoring. Taking a modular, cloud-native approach to architecture can also help support fine-grained role-based access control.
MSPs should also look for a range of capabilities when evaluating unified solutions, including true multi-tenancy, native AI, and modular architecture. Robust multi-tenancy is crucial to maintaining strong service across a growing customer base, while modular architecture enables the business to scale up operations and add new capabilities as required, without sacrificing the benefits of the single platform.
It’s crucial MSPs can add clients and capabilities on a truly scalable, seamless basis – as a result, the option to integrate with third-party systems is also important, connecting seamlessly with tools across IT, security and business ecosystems via open APIs and pre-built connectors.
When it comes to native AI, the sky’s the limit. For example, AI-powered automation can help operators to accelerate workflows with ticket summarisation, sentiment detection, alert correlation, and predictive thresholds. These capabilities speed up the repetitive work of technicians, enabling them to accurately prioritise the most important tickets – and helping to deliver rapid solutions when those tickets have been selected.
Standing out
Platform-based MSP tools have a crucial role to play in enabling long-term scale, security, and competitive differentiation. MSPs need platforms that adapt to their growth, support their preferred tools, and eliminate the friction of fragmented systems. Bringing standalone MSP tools together under a single platform can help deliver depth, flexibility, and scalability that helps providers grow alongside their clients’ needs.
In an increasingly crowded space, those capabilities will be crucial to achieve competitive differentiation. By reducing friction, improving visibility, and adding intelligent, AI-enabled tools, MSPs can deliver rapid results for customers, improve working conditions for technicians, and ensure that their offering is future-proofed, able to evolve with the needs of the market.
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