Unlocking Automation for MSPs: Advancing Scalable, Efficient Service Delivery

If you’re running a managed services business right now, you’re probably feeling the squeeze from every direction. On one hand, customers expect faster response times, broader expertise, and seamless service across hybrid, cloud, and on-prem environments. On the other hand, you’re being asked to do it all with fewer resources, tighter margins, and less room for error.

We’re hearing it everywhere — MSPs are no longer just troubleshooting partners. They’re strategic partners. You’re expected to deliver consistent, proactive, and secure services while juggling a stack of tools and constantly shifting customer expectations.

At Itential, we work with MSPs of all sizes who are leaning into automation as the only scalable way to keep up — not just to survive, but to differentiate.

I recently hosted a webinar where we got into the real-world impact of automation for MSPs — what’s working, what’s still getting in the way, and how the right platform can shift the entire service delivery model.

Watch it here or keep scrolling for a few key insights from the conversation:

One common theme across every MSP we talk to: you’re growing, but you can’t just throw more people at the problem. Manual tickets, custom scripts, and swivel-chair workflows simply don’t scale — and worse, they introduce risk.

That’s why automation should be a first-class citizen in the service delivery model. The challenge for both MSPs and enterprises then becomes how automation is operationalized and managed. MSPs are using Itential today to:

• Automate repetitive, low-value tasks like port resets and configuration changes.
• Speed up customer onboarding from days to minutes.
• Shift engineers away from tickets and toward innovation.

The positive impacts are being realized and it’s not just about speed — it’s about consistency, auditability, and reliability. Every time.

As with most things, experiencing the positive impact of progress only brings a thirst for more! To deliver more, the challenge for MSPs is addressing areas in which more input is needed for individual customer needs. Supporting a growing base of customers means operating across a wide range of tools, domains, and infrastructure environments — each with its own requirements and constraints. That complexity introduces significant overhead, especially when many of those requirements and constraints are customer-specific challenges and can often be siloed activites that are very difficult to scale.

With Itential, MSPs can centralize and standardize their approach to automation while maintaining the flexibility required to support diverse customer environments. Key capabilities include:

• Collaboration and ongoing management of automation assets provided by both MSPs and customers.
• Operationalizing automation assets alongside wider infrastructure with orchestrated workflows — isolated, secure contexts for each customer.
• Integrating seamlessly with existing tools like Ansible, NetBox, ServiceNow, and CLI-based systems.
• Creating reusable workflow templates that can be adapted and deployed across tenants.

This modular, multi-domain orchestration model allows MSPs to deliver consistent service quality at scale — without compromising visibility, governance, or control.

One of the most exciting shifts we’re seeing is MSPs empowering their customers with self-service — safely and securely. Using Itential, you can expose pre-approved workflows through customer-facing portals, making it easy for end users to:

• Request changes.
• Trigger common actions.
• Get visibility into outcomes.

It’s a win-win. Customers get faster resolution, and you reduce ticket volume while keeping full control over what gets executed and how.

MSPs are at a crossroads. The ones who will win aren’t those who just respond faster — they’re the ones who rethink how work gets done. Automation and orchestration are key levers to network infrastructure innovation.

At Itential, we’re proud to partner with forward-thinking MSPs who are trading manual grind for orchestrated, scalable service delivery. If you missed the webinar, it’s worth a watch — we cover real-world automation strategies that are making a difference today.

And if you’re starting or scaling your automation journey, we’d love to talk. Let’s unlock what’s possible — together.