The all-in-one platform trap: why depth, not just breadth, wins for MSPs

The move toward all-in-one platforms feels unstoppable. Organisations are being drawn into consolidating with single vendors to simplify management, reduce procurement friction, and bring everything under one roof. The appeal is obvious – predictability, convenience, and the reassurance that comes from standardising on a trusted brand.

But for MSPs, this trend creates both an opportunity and a hidden danger.

While having fewer tools to manage can sound appealing, breadth rarely equals depth. In my experience, many businesses assume that because such a platform includes a security suite, they’re automatically protected. But just because it’s all under one roof doesn’t mean every requirement is covered. 

That misplaced confidence can create dangerous blind spots, and it’s here that MSPs have an essential role to play in restoring balance.

When consolidation creates risk

One of the biggest misconceptions I see in enterprise security is the belief that if a capability is included in a licence, it must be good enough. That mindset is fine for most IT support tools, but it’s dangerous when it comes to solutions that are relied upon to protect the business from cyberattacks. 

The reality is that all-in-one platforms often offer broad coverage at the surface level but lack the depth required to detect, contain, and disrupt real-world attacks. This is particularly true inside the network, where attackers move after gaining initial access. East–west traffic, where lateral movement, ransomware propagation, and insider threats unfold, is the area most overlooked by broad platforms.  Yet it’s where attacks do the most damage.

Our latest research found that despite widespread adoption of cloud detection and response tools, 90% of security leaders experienced lateral movement incidents in the past year. On average, each incident caused more than seven hours of downtime and cost organisations around $227,000.

And for MSPs, those gaps become service risks. When a bundled tool lacks the depth to detect or contain real-world attacks, it’s the MSP, not the platform vendor, that carries the operational burden, the emergency weekend work, and the client frustration that can end a contract.

Beyond security gaps, platformisation creates a second problem: it makes differentiation nearly impossible. If every MSP leads with the same platform, the market becomes flat. Services begin to look identical, margins shrink, and customers struggle to tell one provider from another. In a fiercely competitive market, MSPs cannot afford to be reduced to licence fulfilment.  The partners who win are those who position themselves as strategic advisors, not resellers.

Why specialist tools still matter

When it comes to cybersecurity, agility and depth matter more than breadth. Platform vendors inevitably evolve on slower release cycles, tied to roadmaps that prioritise stability and scale over innovation. Specialist security providers, by contrast, tend to push boundaries faster and do better with adapting to new attack techniques. 

Segmentation is a prime example. Whilst platforms may claim basic traffic controls, true segmentation requires granular policy enforcement that can contain ransomware or lateral movement in real time - something broad suites rarely achieve with the same precision or speed.

Shifting from tools to outcomes

The problem is too many customer conversations still begin with the wrong question: “What tools do we already have?” 

It’s an understandable starting point, especially when budgets are tight and enterprise licences bundle in so many security features. But focusing on what’s included misses the point. Security should be framed as an outcome, not a features list.

I encourage partners to reframe these discussions around the results their customers need: better visibility, faster containment, greater resilience. Starting from outcomes naturally moves the conversation from selling tools to solving problems. If your customers are only asking what’s in the bundle, you’re not addressing their challenge. The real question is: “What are we trying to achieve?”

This shift changes the partner’s role completely. Rather than acting as resellers, MSPs become trusted advisors who align technology decisions with risk reduction, compliance, and business continuity. That’s where true value lies – not in the stack itself, but in the confidence it delivers.

Integration as a differentiator  

The real opportunity for MSPs isn't choosing platforms over specialists or vice versa, it's integration. That is, stitching together platforms and specialist tools to build secure, outcome-driven architectures that customers can’t get anywhere else.

The most successful partners I see are those who take the time to understand how each layer of technology interacts, then tune and optimise those integrations to deliver measurable resilience. 

This is especially true for strategies like Zero Trust and breach containment, which typically require multiple specialist vendors offering complementary capabilities. Being able to curate the right selection of platforms, specialist tools, and services to create a single cohesive strategy, as well as matching it to each customer’s unique IT environment and business needs, is where MSPs can really prove their worth. 

Making platformisation safe for business

For most MSPs, consolidation is now a customer expectation. All-in-one platforms promise simplicity, fewer vendors to manage, and predictable licensing. But the more customers collapse their security stack into one ecosystem, the harder it becomes for MSPs to differentiate, and the greater the risk that essential controls get lost in the gaps.

The role of MSPs is to make platformisation safe, ensuring customers gain the benefits of consolidation without inheriting its blind spots. It’s not about abandoning platformisation, but guiding it, leveraging best-in-class technology where appropriate to build an environment that supports a unified view without sacrificing critical control.

By combining the reach of major platforms with the depth of specialist expertise and tools like segmentation , MSPs can build architectures that are both agile and resilient. Platformisation isn’t the enemy – complacency is. The partners who help customers balance convenience with control, and who add depth where platforms only offer breadth, will be the ones who earn trust, demonstrate true value, and secure a lasting competitive advantage in the market.