Focus on MSP paid off: Applaud

Local managed IT and services provider finds benefits in early MSP focus

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The marketplace has matured, with CIOs and IT managers realising the Cloud is not hype anymore.

That is according to Applaud CEO, Ricci Danieletto, who says there are some tangible benefits that they can realise by embracing components of the Cloud and an MSP model.

We’re unlike some of its peers in the marketplace, who may have started out as systems integrators or a value added distributor, Applaud started out in MSP back in 2004.

“We founded the business as a MSP first, and we soon went from a 24x5 to a 24x7 operation,” Danieletto said.

Approximately two years later, the company decided to build up its consulting arm and grow the two areas of the business together.

“With the exception of the GFC, where the roots of the business were a bit undercapitalised, we’ve gone from strength to strength,” Danieletto said.

Market demand

Even though Applaud decided to embrace the Cloud two years ago and offer its own version of Cloud services, Danieletto says there was no reason to abandon what the company was already doing.

“The managed services that we do today, we do really well,” he said.

“That’s why we have an attrition rate that is negligible in the scheme of things, as far as our customers are concerned.”

At the same time, Danieletto says there is no reason why the company could not evolve those managed services.

“In varying degrees and quantities, we’ve had a very emphatic response to some of the services we’re offering,” he said.

However, Danieletto admits that Applaud’s earlier offering, the service desk as a core service desk function, has hit a plateau in the last 12 months.

“It hasn’t deteriorated, but it has not grown at all,” he said.

What Applaud has seen demand for has been some of the complementary services it offers, such as monitoring capabilities, remote device management, managed desktop and IaaS.

“It’s an exciting place to be right now,” he said.

“I’ve never been more excited in the last 12 months about what Applaud is doing, even in those first six to 12 months when we were a baby in the scheme of things.”