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.

Next wave of COVID-19 fallout for MSPs starts to arrive

Next wave of COVID-19 fallout for MSPs starts to arrive

The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another classic example of an ill-wind that ultimately threw a lot of good in the general direction of managed service providers (MSPs). Naturally, the MSP community as a whole wishes it never happened, but like...

/ July 22, 2021 / 1 Comment
MSPs celebrate growth as IT spending questions remain

MSPs celebrate growth as IT spending questions remain

Questions on the levels of IT spending from SMBs and other organizations will exercise in the future continue, even amongst recent significant MSP growth. Managed services generated nearly $8 billion in annual contract value in the second quarter of 2021,...

/ July 20, 2021 / 1 Comment
Ransomware attacks drive increased DRaaS opportunities for MSPs

Ransomware attacks drive increased DRaaS opportunities for MSPs

Disaster recovery (DR) is the only real defense against ransomware attacks. However, a recent survey of 150 technical and business decision makers from organizations with more than 150 employees, conducted by cloud hosting services provider iland, suggests most organizations are...

/ July 8, 2021
MSPs must watch where the cloud pendulum is swinging

MSPs must watch where the cloud pendulum is swinging

It should come as no surprise to managed service providers (MSPs) that consumption of cloud infrastructure increased considerably in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a 41 percent increase in spending on a base of $45.7 billion...

/ July 1, 2021
Organizations need MSPs to become cloud security heroes

Organizations need MSPs to become cloud security heroes

When not done right, cloud security can become a bit of a mess. Misconfigurations of cloud services are more widespread than ever at a time when cybercriminals have tools that enable them to discover vulnerabilities in a matter of minutes....

/ June 24, 2021
MSPs must follow the data to find the money

MSPs must follow the data to find the money

Savvy managed service providers (MSPs) need to be paying more attention to where data is being processed and analyzed because the pendulum is definitely swinging once again. The bulk of enterprise IT organizations today are in the midst of some...

/ June 17, 2021 / 9 Comments
Rise of data monetization bodes well for MSPs

Rise of data monetization bodes well for MSPs

When it comes to data management, a full 96 percent of IT organizations are now operating at or over capacity, with not much relief in sight, at a time when more organizations than ever are evaluating data monetization opportunities. A...

/ June 10, 2021
MSPs must continue digital business transformation dialogue

MSPs must continue digital business transformation dialogue

One of the most subtle and profound changes that has occurred since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is the types of IT projects managed service providers (MSPs) have been engaged in by their end customers, specifically digital business transformation...

/ June 2, 2021
On-premises IT environments remain popular

On-premises IT environments remain popular

While there’s no doubt there’s been an acceleration in the number of workloads being deployed on public clouds, managed service providers (MSPs) shouldn’t assume that this activity is coming at the expense of workloads being deployed in on-premises IT environments....

/ May 27, 2021
Nuanced approach to cloud service consumption is emerging

Nuanced approach to cloud service consumption is emerging

Conventional wisdom holds that, in the long-term, it’s inevitable the bulk of application workloads will be running on a cloud service, typically a shared public cloud infrastructure. However, a survey of 150 global business and IT professionals published this week...

/ May 20, 2021