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.

digital experience
MSPs Need to Provide a Better Digital Experience to End Users

MSPs Need to Provide a Better Digital Experience to End Users

A global survey of 1,000 digital workers and 500 senior IT decision-makers published this week confirms what many managed service providers (MSPs) already know all too well. End users are often their own worst enemies.

/ December 9, 2021
Gamification emerges as next major tool for upskilling partners

Gamification emerges as next major tool for upskilling partners

At its re:Invent conference this week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) revealed it is now employing gamification to encourage partners to improve and expand their cloud practices. AWS GameDay, now available to all AWS partners, is a collaborative learning exercise that...

/ December 2, 2021
Digital business transformation requires MSPs that get data management

Digital business transformation requires MSPs that get data management

A survey conducted by Pega of 750 senior vice presidents, vice presidents, senior directors, directors, senior managers, and managers of IT finds that 62 percent of respondents have identified data management as the most important competency their organization needs to...

/ November 26, 2021
Rise of hybrid cloud computing creates training challenge for MSPs

Rise of hybrid cloud computing creates training challenge for MSPs

A report published by S&P Global Market Intelligence finds well over half of organizations (57 percent) are now pursuing some form of a hybrid cloud computing strategy, with 39 percent of organizations reporting they are actively implementing that strategy. In...

/ November 19, 2021
Rate at which applications shift to the cloud accelerates

Rate at which applications shift to the cloud accelerates

A survey of 2,834 subscribers to the Programming and Infrastructure & Ops newsletters published by O’Reilly Media finds that nearly half of respondents plan to migrate 50 percent or more of their workloads to the cloud in the coming year....

/ November 11, 2021
Faster shift to the cloud creates more gaps for MSPs to fill

Faster shift to the cloud creates more gaps for MSPs to fill

A survey of 500 IT leaders from organizations with over 500 employees in the United States and United Kingdom suggests IT teams are now more than halfway over the proverbial fence as an increasing number of workloads shift to the...

/ November 5, 2021
Gartner sees continued robust demand for IT services

Gartner sees continued robust demand for IT services

Gartner is forecasting that worldwide enterprise IT spending is projected to reach $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.5 percent from 2021, with spending on IT services growing at robust 8.6 percent to reach $1.3 trillion. That growth in...

/ October 28, 2021
DOJ employs False Claims Act to strengthen federal cybersecurity

DOJ employs False Claims Act to strengthen federal cybersecurity

The U.S. Department of Justice is looking to encourage more organizations to beef up their cybersecurity by extending the scope of an existing False Claims Act (FCA) to pursue cases against government contractors that hide a security breach rather than...

/ October 21, 2021
Report surfaces major gains for MSPs serving enterprise customers

Report surfaces major gains for MSPs serving enterprise customers

A report published this week by Information Services Group (ISG) shows the annual contract value (ACV) of managed services contracts valued at more than $5 million hit a record $8.4 billion for the third quarter, representing a 22 percent increase...

/ October 14, 2021
Number of disruptive data center incidents confirms need for MSPs

Number of disruptive data center incidents confirms need for MSPs

Despite any investments IT organizations may have made to ensure high availability, a global survey of 374 data center managers finds 91 percent experienced at least one disruptive incident during the last 12 months, including downtime related to an outage...

/ October 7, 2021