The origins of the global credit crunch highlight the problems that arise when you offer a service based on expectation rather than certainty. Lending capital that is itself based on bad debt to people with barely the means to pay it back is, to the observer, completely irrational and criminal.

Some would argue to the contrary; that this is a measure of how sophisticated our banking and credit systems have become.

As many resellers continue to explore managed services, there is a lesson to be learned amid the mortgage crisis about the value of sticking to old-school principles of ownership, equity and responsibility.

Too often, customers will find that the managed service purchased from company A is actually indebted via several parties, ending up at company Z.

The process of financial institutions trading mortgage debt with one another is what has undermined the banking system. Assets that would exchange freely have become illiquid and discovering the underlying debt is almost impossible.

There is a real danger of the UK IT channel following this same kind of path with managed services. Just who is
managing them? How many degrees of separation are there between the customer and support? How many resellers that tout a 24/7 operations centre have the keys?

Some small provincial building societies have hit on a strategy to only lend money that they have to their mortgage borrowers.

The obstacle to implementing this approach to managed IT services is that it is not sufficiently ambitious for the
majority of resellers to adopt.

But think of it a different way: growing your own managed services is an investment that will be a liability until enough critical mass is achieved to cover the costs and start making a profit. Believing in the quality and provenance of your offering would require a great deal of confidence from the team providing it.

So is your business built on ambition or confidence? I know which one I would rather have.

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