Exclusive: BlueApache CEO on overhauling its managed services arm

Michael Zuppa discusses the MSP’s rebranding and why it’s happening now.

Australian MSP BlueApache has overhauled its managed services offering in a move to reflect the current AI-centric market.

For the past two years, CEO Michael Zuppa and his team have making new investments and partnerships to create this new reimagined MSP.

Speaking to CRN Australia exclusively, Zuppa said mid-market organisations are going through one of the “most challenging points in decades”.

He said there is so “much disruption and uncertainty” to what the future looks likes for partner organisations.

“We can see there's an environment that's moving at an incredible pace, and we need to take something and go how should things be done differently?” He explained.

“Our mission is to empower our clients to outpace change and to give them a launch pad to drive transformation, automation, and long-term resilience.

“Now we have to deliver on that mission.”

For BlueApache to be viable for the long term, Zuppa said they need to understand what the customer of the future looks like.

“Getting more understanding of their key industries, their key ways of working, especially if we're going to spend more time in understanding their business process mappings and where and how their business needs to change in the way that they serve their customers,” he said.

“It's about being vibrant and viable in a very uncertain world that's happening in the next three to five years when you look at all of this AI disruption.”

Three-tiered approach

Through this new reinvention of the MSP, Zuppa said BlueApache has transformed every aspect of its service layers. He said this transformation has happened for them to service three routes to market.

The first route is a classic managed services outcome, which Zuppa calls the standard route they normally do.

The second is helping mid-market enterprise organisations run their internal IT teams and stacks.

“By giving them a fully integrated platform that they can use their people and their processes to operate in,” he said.

“We've done all the heavy work, we've done all the plumbing, we've done all the redesign, and now we can show actual benchmark percentage operational efficiencies that an organisation like that can gain.”

The last route is based around integration and certification.

“We have all the certification, all the credibility, and the delivery partner status with each of these vendors to then service enterprise organisations who want that typical integrated approach specifically for one of the technology elements that end up that underpins that platform,” he explained.

Through this new managed services platform, Zuppa wants to give his customers the capacity to innovate.

“That means to make sure that they are a safe, governed platform,” he explained.

“[The platform] enhances experiences and is an environment where they can innovate safely.

BlueApache has been working closely with its key partners and customers as it rolls out this new platform.

“[They are] super keen, and especially because they see our they fit into a much more holistic IT service operations play,” he said.

“Our customers are very excited about what they're going to get access to as being part of our managed services.”

Zuppa explained this new platform has also opened the door for new customers, that are already seeing operational efficiencies.

“We do have a number of new customers that we've onboarded in this new operating framework already,” he said.

One customer they certified them for ISO 270001, and implemented Microsoft 365 E7, one of the first to do in the country.

"We migrated [the customer] from an AWS environment into a full Azure stacked environment and drove operational efficiencies by 35 percent. There's tangible results of what's possible by focusing on the transformation and not the transaction,” he said.

Future plans

Zuppa wants customers to see is that BlueApache is on their “side of the table”.

“This is a partnered environment. No one has all the answers. We do not have all the answers, which is why we ourselves partner well and bring more people to the table to bring more ideas, more exposure, more capability,” he said.

“But the foundation is there, the service management, the governance, the regulatory alignment. All of that is what we make sure is always in play.”

For the first 12 months of this new managed services play, Zuppa aims to build a portfolio of “referenceable” customers.

“Once we're getting more referenceable customers that have adopted that full stack themselves, so not our managed services, but operating with their own people, but on that stack, and showing the actual benchmark results will be certainly a great achievement for us,” he said.

“The compounding effect between our three routes to market, fuels each other, and so by doing the integrations, the optimisations, and the workflows into the platform. It benefits every customer and every platform customer, and so the whole community ecosystem becomes stronger.”