Anyone can set up a business and call themselves a Managed Service Provider (MSP). But with providers taking responsibility for increasingly sensitive customer systems, the lack of universally accepted professional standards is causing problems.

That’s the challenge Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) CEO Dan Wensley wants the channel to address through a new industry-led standards initiative.

“Anybody could hang out a shingle and call themselves an MSP, and that holds true today,” Wensley told at GTIA ChannelCon EMEA in London.

He said the industry had struggled for decades with the question of how providers could demonstrate their expertise and differentiate themselves from competitors. But the stakes are rising as MSPs handle customers’ cybersecurity, intellectual property and data.

“We have keys to all the IP; we have keys to all the data. An MSP is responsible for keeping their customers secure, but there is no way to measure the effectiveness of that,” said Wensley.

Wensley also believes the need for professional standards has become more pressing as cybersecurity and AI increase the responsibilities placed on MSPs.

What would professional standards look like?

GTIA has partnered with Texas A&M University’s Global Cyber Research Institute to establish the Consortium for Responsible IT Services. The initiative aims to create a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that would develop professional, operational, and technical standards for IT service providers.

For MSPs, the framework could provide a more consistent way to demonstrate their capabilities to customers, rather than relying on vendor certifications, experience or individual claims of expertise. Wensley said the requirements would likely address areas including technology stacks and operational proficiency, although the details have yet to be agreed.

“Our members will decide on that. The experts in our membership will be the ones at the forefront of it, and then it’ll be taken out to our global community and looked at and peer reviewed and then put into practice,” he said.

The consortium has already begun meeting, with development of the full framework expected to take two to three years.

For the time being, MSPs will be left with questions: how demanding will the requirements be? What evidence will businesses need to demonstrate competence? And could meeting the standards become a differentiator when competing for customers?

Raising the bar across the channel

Wensley pointed to the lack of formal industry-wide requirements with the qualifications needed to enter other professions.

“We’re one of the few industries on the planet that haven’t already been regulated by the government,” he said.

The initiative does indeed come as governments, including the UK, consider greater oversight of service providers. Wensley believes the industry should take the lead rather than wait for requirements to be imposed.

“Certification, training, and standards are coming to this industry whether we build them or it is pushed upon us,” he added.