Building a New Service Offering around Cisco ThousandEyes: A Guide for Managed Service Providers

A special shout-out and thank you to Russ Atkin for his thought leadership and invaluable insights on the service creation process, which inspired the writing of this blog.

In my previous blog, I explored how Cisco ThousandEyes empowers Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to deliver outstanding client experiences by providing unparalleled visibility into network and application performance. As we continue to delve deeper into the potential of leveraging ThousandEyes, this blog will attempt to provide guidance, structure, and best practices for MSPs to consider as they journey through the process of creating or enhancing a service offering around this powerful tool.

Why Digital Experience Assurance (DXA) Is Increasingly Crucial

The importance of DXA cannot be overstated. According to the survey and analysis in the 2024 Global Trends Report, 40% of IT leaders and professionals believe that the network can positively impact customer and employee experiences, thereby advancing digital business initiatives. Furthermore, 75% of these leaders plan to deploy tools within the next two years that offer end-to-end visibility via a single console across various network domains. However, 35% currently lack visibility into complete network paths, including internet and cloud networks, and only 39% have either limited visibility or full visibility using multiple consoles into digital experiences between users, devices, applications, and services.

This gap in visibility and the growing complexity of network environments underscore the escalating need for comprehensive DXA solutions. By addressing these challenges, MSPs can position themselves as indispensable partners in their clients’ digital transformation journeys.

The Opportunity for MSPs

The trend towards DXA presents a golden opportunity for MSPs to stand out in a competitive market. By offering services that ensure consistently reliable experiences across users, devices, applications, and services, MSPs can differentiate themselves. With 38% of respondents expecting their digital experience assurance to be AI-enabled in the future, there is a clear demand for advanced, intelligent solutions.

ThousandEyes, with its robust observability capabilities, equips MSPs with the essential tools to deliver a high-quality experience. It addresses a wide array of critical use cases for modern businesses, ranging from network, and application performance monitoring, to user experience, and security compliance monitoring. By leveraging ThousandEyes’ end-to-end visibility and comprehensive performance insights, MSPs can proactively resolve issues, optimize network performance, and increase overall customer satisfaction. This not only minimizes downtime and operational disruptions for the customer, but also positions the MSP as leaders in delivering superior digital experiences.

ThousandEyes Licensing Model

To set the stage for the service creation process, it’s important to understand the licensing components of ThousandEyes for MSPs looking to integrate this powerful tool into their service offerings. ThousandEyes licensing is structured around different types of agents and the consumption associated with each. The primary license types include Cloud Agents, Enterprise Agents, and Endpoint Agents, each serving distinct monitoring needs.

• Cloud Agents: These are globally distributed agents managed by ThousandEyes, ideal for monitoring external-facing applications and services. They consume units based on the number and frequency of tests conducted.
• Enterprise Agents: Deployed within an organization’s own network, these agents provide visibility into internal network performance and application delivery. Unit consumption for Enterprise Agents is determined by the number of agents and the volume of tests they perform.
• Endpoint Agents: Installed on end-user devices, these agents offer insights into the user experience from the endpoint perspective. They are particularly useful for monitoring remote workforces and distributed environments. Consumption here is based on the number of endpoints and the types of tests executed.

ThousandEyes employs a tiered unit consumption model, enabling MSPs to scale their monitoring capabilities according to their clients’ needs. Each test type—such as HTTP server tests, page load tests, transaction tests, and network tests—consumes a specific number of units. The frequency and complexity of these tests further influence unit consumption. For instance, more frequent or complex tests will consume more units.

This tiered approach ensures that MSPs can select the appropriate level of service for their clients, whether they need basic monitoring or comprehensive, enterprise-grade solutions. By understanding and leveraging this flexible licensing structure, MSPs can effectively manage costs, customize their service offering, while delivering high-value services tailored to the specific requirements of their customers.

Creating a new ThousandEyes managed services offering involves several key steps and considerations. To help MSPs understand the service creation process and the related thought process, let’s review the process at a high level:

• Assess Current Services and Customer Demographics:
  • Review existing services to identify gaps and opportunities for enhancement with ThousandEyes.
  • Understand the customer base, including industry challenges, service mix, and target customer profiles.
• Brainstorm/Ideation of Enhanced Capabilities:
  • Conduct brainstorming sessions to integrate enhanced capabilities and customer-focused outcomes into the service offerings.
  • Consider a “Good-Better-Best” approach to address various market segments.
• Design a Tiered Service Model:
  • Develop a tiered service model (e.g. Essential, Advantage, Premier) to cater to different customer needs and budgets.
  • Each tier should offer progressively more advanced features and support.
• Introduce Service Tokens (Optional):
  • Implement a service token system for ad-hoc activities, allowing customers to pool or carry forward tokens for flexible service consumption.
  • Tokens can represent a dollar value or unit of labor and be offered as part of the monthly charge.
  • The service catalog should specify the quantity of tokens required for various activities, giving customers a budget for ad-hoc tasks without the need for purchase orders or requisitions.
  • This approach can streamline service delivery and enhance customer convenience.
• Develop a Business Case:
  • Create a comprehensive business case, including a Service Responsibility Matrix (SRM) for each service tier.
  • Adopt best practices by clearly defining and scaling the service tiers to meet varying customer needs.

Below is an example of service tiers for a ThousandEyes managed services offering.  Use this as a starting point and customize the offering based on objectives:

• Essential Tier: Basic CloudApp availability monitoring, standard synthetics (Web-HTTP & Network-Server), automated notifications of service degradation, and 60-minute testing frequency.
• Advantage Tier: Includes all Essential features, real-user monitoring for one website/web app, agent-less deployment, automated anomaly notifications, and advisory assistance during business hours.
• Premier Tier: Includes all Advantage features, custom app monitoring with regular health checks, enhanced support and root cause identification, full workflow instrumentation, and dependency observability for third-party services.

Key considerations in the service offering should include customer interaction, scalability, integration with existing customer infrastructure, and robust support options such as a 24/7 help desk and technical assistance.

Develop a marketing and sales strategy by identifying and targeting specific customer segments that would benefit most from the ThousandEyes managed services. Clearly articulate the value proposition of each service tier and recognize the need to train the sales team on the features and benefits of the new service offering, enabling them to understand the key differences between the new service offering vs. any other traditional tools, monitoring capabilities, and/or existing service offerings.

Finally, focus on feedback and continuous improvement by regularly collecting and analyzing customer feedback to improve the service. Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure the service meets customer expectations, and continuously refine and enhance the service based on feedback and available metrics.

Seizing the Opportunity: Transforming MSP Service Offerings with ThousandEyes for Outcome-Based Success

By adopting a structured approach, MSPs can successfully develop and launch a new ThousandEyes managed services offering that aligns with customer needs and generates additional revenue. Utilizing ThousandEyes is a significant step towards embracing digital business assurance, transforming reactive, infrastructure-based operations into proactive, data-driven services. Managed observability provides deep insights into user experiences by correlating telemetry data, delivering valuable business outcomes. By understanding customer demographics and desired results, MSPs can design solutions that augment existing offers, unlocking additional value for customers and positioning themselves to capitalize on the growing observability market.

Engage your Cisco Account Executive or Sales Business Development Manager for a collaborative journey through the service creation process.

Additional Resources:

• Visit the Cisco Partner Managed Services SalesConnect page for recordings of previous MS VoE sessions
• Check out my latest blogs for insights into Managed Services opportunities for MSPs

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