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Multi-vendor support vs. Vendor neutrality
After my "Special Incite" on MSS last week, I got some good feedback. Most of it said my analogy to the banking industry was spot on. Of course, there are always those vendors that send me notes wingeing about how I've got them mis-categorized and how I don't understand their business.
Whatever. But one of the comments bears digging a bit deeper into. And that was the idea of a managed security service provider, who is part of a product vendor, claiming to be "vendor neutral." You've heard it before. In fact, all the big IT providers, who have big IT service engines, claim to be vendor neutral.
I posit that these folks provide MULTI-VENDOR SUPPORT. That means they can manage and support products from their competition. But they are not neutral. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
They aren't. In fact, they can't be. And just so I'm not being my general cynical self, I'll actually put in place a few hurdles for these vendors to prove they are truly VENDOR NEUTRAL.
- Separate sales force - This is really the first hurdle and it's usually the hardest one to overcome for a lot of the vendors. Basically, services is a value-add they sell to their existing product customers. But to really be vendor neutral, then they have to have a separate sales force, who only sell services.
- No services comp for product reps - Let's say a vendor actually does have a separate sales force for services. Great. Do their product reps get compensated when a services engagement is sold to that customer? If yes, then again, they are not truly vendor neutral because there are kick-backs happening. Sure, they are finder fees, but at the end of the day, you can't be neutral if you are kicking back commission to the guy selling hardware (or software).
- No product comp for the services reps - Yes the converse has to be true as well. The services reps cannot get compensated if a new set of products gets sold based upon an engagement.
To be clear, these are 3 very high bars and they should be. Because NEUTRALITY is not something to be trifled with.
Personally, I don't think any vendor that does MSS (or any other services for that matter) should be claiming to be neutral. It's important to get some level of leverage from efforts both on the product and services side. If you can't do that, they why even bother? So providing multi-vendor support is not a bad thing, but it's not being vendor neutral either.
End user organizations need to figure out what is important to them. I'm cool with doing business with a product vendor's services arm. As long as they go in with their eyes open. The vendor wants to sell product, and they should. You (the user) may even want to buy that product. And you shouldn't feel bad about that. But don't believe them when the first bullet on the vendor's services PPT is "vendor-neutral."
Photo credit: shadowtech
Mike,
A big factor in 'neutrality' is whether the client is looking for the MSS vendor to provide the sensors in which case product vendors will push/lean towards their own. In the case where the client basically just wants to oursource the monitoring, reporting, etc. of their existing configuration the MSS vendor is in a take it or leave it situation regardless of their product preference.
Larry, I agree with you. In the latter case you describe, basically the MSS player is "outsourcing" the existing infrastructure (and maybe people), so they have to either deal with what's already there or rip it out for their own stuff. That's an economic decision.
Ultimately I still believe that vendors will push their own stuff. It's what pays the bills and it doesn't make sense not to. The neutrality/independence idea is a red herring and really more about marketing, to ally any fears of the customer about being railroaded down an unintended technology direction.
Mike,
I am really not trying to sound defensive here. Just wanted to point out that you are casting a very tough mold. Even Accuvant does not fit your description with those strictures (we resell MSSP services in a few spaces), and I view us as vendor neutral any day of the week (that is one of the reasons I came over). Of course, we are reselling someone else's service (we're not big enough to build that ourselves, though we did create ControlPath which has a SaaS offering) and products. Our sales people also make money off MSSP, SaaS, products, and separate services from our services groups.
However, our MSSP, SaaS, and everything reselling is done strictly within our sales space. Our services arms (compliance, assessment, wireless, and our new data security practice) do not recommend products. Do I work with the service practices to create recommendations for the client? Of course. That just makes sense. But it is up to the sales team to make that recommendation.
So though I don't think we fit your definition, I can say that we are about as vendor neutral as it gets these days. In fact, I fully spelled out in a recent SOW that our services teams do not recommend product. I did it because the client specifically wanted product recommendations in the deliverable, and we did not want the reputation of our service practices being compromised.
Of course, I would love it if we sold only services. That would be awesome because it would keep me from needing to learn everyone's products and trying to remember the differences between each one. It would also keep me from dealing with vendors (love you guys, but sometimes you are just plain pushy).
Michael