About the Blog

Urban definition

Where the name comes from

Every wave of technology arrives the same way. Cloud, SD-WAN, Zero Trust, SASE, DEX, AI... each one starts with hype, and hype does a job - it creates awareness, unlocks budgets and gets people excited about what's coming next.

Then comes the point where people get a bit fed up with it. They've heard the keynote, read the analyst slide and learned the acronyms. What they want now is the next level of detail: how it really works, what it changes in the day-to-day world and what it means for them personally.

That's the point this blog is written for.

Drop the Hype means taking the hype out of the conversation. Put it to one side for a minute, keep things simple and strike a sensible balance between the big picture and the detail. It's meant to be a bit of relief from the ambiguity and the bluster.

Why this blog exists

Drop the Hype was born out of years of frustration at the disconnect between technology vendors and the managed service providers they're trying to partner with. I've spent 20 years at the intersection of both worlds - distribution, vendors, VARs, MSPs, MSSPs, GSIs, CSPs and ISVs - across four continents and thousands of partner conversations.

The same pattern keeps playing out. Vendors lead with technology, MSPs get sold a vision instead of a foundation, and services get built around the hype instead of customer problems and service deliverables. Somewhere between the excitement and the execution, profitability quietly disappears.

There's a specific order to how a successful managed service should be built. The customer comes first, then the challenge, then the service, then the architecture. Technology comes last, always. Almost everything that goes wrong happens when that order gets reversed.

I'm on a mission to change the way vendors support the growth of the MSP market. That means focusing on the phases between hype and profitability, the ones that get treated as an afterthought or forgotten about entirely. It's the most underserved part of the managed services lifecycle, and it's where MSPs are most often left to work things out for themselves, frustrated at being treated like a reseller.

Who it's for

This isn't a vendor blog, and it isn't an MSP blog. It's written at the intersection of both, for practice leads, service architects, product managers, channel leaders and anyone else responsible for building something that has to work in the real world.

I wouldn't class myself as a blogger. I started this because, over the years, people kept telling me the approach resonated, the observations touched on the pain and it was refreshing to have someone talking sense - mostly in meetings and in comments on LinkedIn.

What Drop the Hype covers

Every post sits under one of four topics, so you always know which side of the managed services partnership it's written for. One topic is written for the MSP, one for the vendor and two for both sides, because the market and the people matter as much as the plan.

Each post carries a topic tag, shown on its image wherever posts are listed. Pick the topic that matches your seat and start there.

Managed Service Practice

Written for the MSP side.

How a managed service actually gets built, priced and run, and where the profit quietly disappears on the way. The fundamentals that vendors rarely talk about and MSPs often skip.

• Service definition and packaging: what's in, what's out and what good looks like for the customer.
• Pricing for margin: pricing models, scope creep and the cost of manual effort.
• Delivery and operations: the commercial and operational friction inside a service business.
• Refreshing old services: when to rebuild, retire or repackage what you already sell.
• Sizing the opportunity: honest numbers before you commit people and tools.

Partner Management

Written from the vendor side.

How vendors build, structure and run an MSP partner business, and what makes a partnership work or quietly fall apart.

• Building an MSP partner programme: starting from the managed service, not the product.
• Partner enablement: helping partners turn your technology into a service they can sell and deliver.
• Running the partner conversation: account management, first meetings and earning trust before the pitch.
• Incentives and behaviours: what the programme rewards, and what that does to the partner.
• Vendor and MSP trust: the human side of the channel, from both seats.

Managed Service Trends

Written for both sides.

The bigger market picture, seen through a service lens: what matters, what to ignore and when to act. Every trend gets the same question first, which is what it means for the service and the customer.

• The hype cycle: how each wave of hype plays out for a service provider, and what past waves teach.
• Analyst and market data: what the numbers say, who said it and how far to trust it.
• AI in managed services: where it changes delivery and pricing, and where it's mostly a new label.
• Regulation and compliance: what new rules mean for providers and their suppliers.
• Consolidation: mergers, acquisitions and what buyers are paying for.

People & Leadership

Written for both sides.

Building and leading specialist teams with purpose, clarity and energy. Good plans fail without the right people behind them, so this topic covers what good leadership looks like in a service business.

• Building specialist teams: the roles, skills and structure a service practice needs.
• Leading with purpose and clarity: direction people can act on without being chased.
• Culture in a service business: how a team behaves when nobody is watching.
• Doing the job before leading it: credibility, and what the front line teaches.
• Developing people: growing the next generation of channel and service talent.

Where to begin

One post per topic, if you only read four:

• Managed Service Practice: Don't Neglect "Legacy" Services
• Partner Management: Stop Calling It a Partnership If All You Want Is a Price
• Managed Service Trends: The Hype Cycle for Managed Service Providers
• People & Leadership: Strategy, Structure, People. In That Order.

Or browse everything in one topic: Managed Service Practice · Partner Management · Managed Service Trends · People & Leadership

The rules of the blog

These are the promises behind every post. If a post ever breaks one, tell me.

• Service before technology. The customer comes first, then the challenge, then the service, then the architecture. Technology comes last, always.
• Hype is good, until it becomes the plan. It creates awareness, excitement and funding, but it doesn't standardise, repeat or scale. This blog is about what happens after.
• Peer to peer. Never superior, never subservient. One practitioner talking to another, in plain English.
• No vendor bashing. My career has been built working for vendors. I respect what they do and the pressures they are under.
• No partner shaming. Whether a partner struggled or thrived, every MSP I've worked with has taught me something.
• Fair to both sides. The MSP and the vendor each get a fair hearing, and the counter-case is named before the conclusion.
• Every claim is backed up. Figures link to where they came from, with the date. Vendor research is labelled as vendor research.
• Real stories only. If I tell you something happened, it happened. Nothing is made up to fit the point.
• A lens, not a rulebook. I don't know everything and nobody does. Take what works for you and challenge the rest.
• Nothing for the sake of it. If there's nothing worth saying, nothing gets published.

No agenda, no hidden sponsors, no content for the sake of content. If it resonates, subscribe and share it. If it doesn't, move on.