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.

IT spending outlook for 2022 looks better than 2021

IT spending outlook for 2022 looks better than 2021

The outlook for IT spending for cloud and managed services for 2022 looks promising, assuming organizations can acquire the hardware needed to drive application deployments. A Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) survey of more than 1000 IT buyers in North America...

/ September 30, 2021
MSPs should expect remote work to be here to stay

MSPs should expect remote work to be here to stay

A survey of 402 executives and technology professionals in the U.S. conducted by Dimensional Research on behalf of ManageEngine, a unit of ZoHo that provides an IT operations platform, suggests managed service providers (MSPs) will be supporting large numbers of...

/ September 23, 2021
MSPs must focus where IT labor skills shortage is greatest

MSPs must focus where IT labor skills shortage is greatest

One of the business adages that remains tried and true in any era is that identifying a customer pain point and solving it for them is a sure-fire path to success. In the case of IT organizations, a survey of...

/ September 16, 2021
MSPs can help customers reduce data storage costs

MSPs can help customers reduce data storage costs

Even though the cost of storing a terabyte of data has dropped dramatically over the last several years, the total volume of data being stored has resulted in a marked increase in the percentage of the IT budget being allocated...

/ September 9, 2021 / 3 Comments
MSPs should prep now for arrival of Windows 11

MSPs should prep now for arrival of Windows 11

Managed service providers (MSPs) should expect to see an increase in support calls around Oct. 5th now that Microsoft has let it be known this week that it plans to start making Windows 11 available on that date. While it’s...

/ September 2, 2021
MSPs must address their IT talent management

MSPs must address their IT talent management

The single biggest gating factor when it comes to enabling managed service providers (MSPs) to expand their business is almost always the available technology expertise they can hire. MSPs are locked in a perennial war for IT talent not only...

/ August 26, 2021
IT leaders start to move past COVID-19 era

IT leaders start to move past COVID-19 era

As organizations of all sizes continue to wait and see how the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic might evolve, a survey of 400 IT leaders at organizations with more than 500 employees suggests IT leaders, in terms of setting...

/ August 19, 2021
DataOps opportunity for MSPs reaches a zenith

DataOps opportunity for MSPs reaches a zenith

A pair of recent reports highlight the growing need for data management or DataOps expertise that many managed service providers (MSPs) are in a better position to provide than an internal IT team. A survey of 150 executives at companies...

/ August 12, 2021
Cloud war accelerates as cloud providers battle for share

Cloud war accelerates as cloud providers battle for share

Cloud infrastructure services spending increased 36 percent to $47 billion in the second quarter with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) now accounting for 61 percent of total spend among all cloud providers, according to a...

/ August 5, 2021 / 1 Comment
Difficult cloud migration experiences create demand for MSPs

Difficult cloud migration experiences create demand for MSPs

A survey of 1000 IT decision makers suggests there is a much greater appreciation of just how challenging it is to manage a successful cloud migration of application workloads. Published by Next Pathway, a provider of a platform for automating...

/ July 29, 2021 / 1 Comment