Mike Vizard

All posts by Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard has covered IT for more than 25 years, and has edited or contributed to a number of tech publications including InfoWorld, eWeek, CRN, Baseline, ComputerWorld, TMCNet, and Digital Review. He currently blogs for IT Business Edge and contributes to CIOinsight, The Channel Insider, Programmableweb and Slashdot. Mike blogs about emerging cloud technology for Smarter MSP.

In MSPs most organizations will zero-trust

In MSPs most organizations will zero-trust

Zero-trust is not a new idea when it comes to cybersecurity, but after a series of high-profile breaches over the past two years, it is all the rage. The concept itself traces its history all the way back to 1994...

/ February 18, 2022
Hybrid Cloud SmarterMSP
Hybrid remains dominant approach to cloud computing

Hybrid remains dominant approach to cloud computing

A global survey of 256 IT and security professionals conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) finds just shy of two-thirds of respondents (61 percent) are employing some form of hybrid cloud computing.

/ February 10, 2022
Survey surfaces increased reliance on MSPs

Survey surfaces increased reliance on MSPs

A recent survey of 1,000 IT decision-makers from small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) across a variety of industries conducted by JumpCloud, a directory platform provider, suggests that managed service providers (MSPs) are now accounting for a much larger share of...

/ February 3, 2022
Need to rein in cloud costs creates opportunities for MSP

Need to rein in cloud costs creates opportunities for MSP

According to a pair of recent reports, organizations are becoming sensitive to cloud computing costs more than ever before. This is good news for managed service providers (MSPs) though, as it’s creating new opportunities.

/ January 27, 2022
Cloud spending recovers in the third quarter

Cloud spending recovers in the third quarter

Spending on cloud infrastructure returned to its previous rates after what appears to be a momentary period of indigestion. International Data Corp. (IDC) estimates spending on dedicated and shared cloud computing environments increased 6.6 percent year-over-year to $18.6 billion in...

/ January 19, 2022
Demand for managed services contracts
Value of managed services contract outpaces overall IT services demand

Value of managed services contract outpaces overall IT services demand

Despite some macroeconomic headwinds the annual contract value for managed services contracts involving larger enterprise IT organizations increased 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 with a record 2,176 contracts being signed.

/ January 13, 2022
observability
Managed observability services will pick up steam in 2022

Managed observability services will pick up steam in 2022

One of the biggest growth opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs) in 2022 will be the transition away from simply monitoring IT environments to providing true observability based on all the metrics, logs and the distributed traces that can be...

/ January 5, 2022 / 5 Comments
MSPs need to place their 2022 digital business transformation bets now

MSPs need to place their 2022 digital business transformation bets now

This past year will be remembered as a time when many managed service providers (MSPs) moved beyond simply being trusted advisors to their clients to become full-fledged strategic partners.

/ December 30, 2021
Savvy MSPs never let a crisis go to waste

Savvy MSPs never let a crisis go to waste

As Winston Churchill once wryly noted, a good crisis should never be wasted. A zero-day Log4j vulnerability that has roiled enterprise IT organizations, is only the latest in a series of cybersecurity incidents in the last year, that have left...

/ December 28, 2021
Changing Attitude Cloud Services
MSPs need to monitor changing attitudes toward cloud service providers

MSPs need to monitor changing attitudes toward cloud service providers

A survey of 1,000 IT leaders suggests that going into 2022 managed service providers (MSPs) will soon find themselves caught between their loyalty to the major cloud service providers and end customers that believe they are being overcharged for services...

/ December 21, 2021 / 1 Comment