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.

Survey yields new insights regarding reliance on MSPs

Survey yields new insights regarding reliance on MSPs

A survey of more than 1,000 IT decision makers in North America and Europe published this week by Spiceworks Ziff-Davis forecasts managed services will account on average for 16 percent of the total IT budget in 2021, a single percentage...

/ September 16, 2020
MSPs need to know where WFH hurts most

MSPs need to know where WFH hurts most

Most managed service providers (MSPs) recognize by now that for the foreseeable future, many of their customers’ employees will be working from home more frequently in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The issue MSPs are interested in now is...

/ September 9, 2020
Race to deliver remote network services at scale is on

Race to deliver remote network services at scale is on

Most managed services revolve around the end point. So any time there is a change to the way PCs and mobile computing devices are employed, the average managed service provider (MSP) will be profoundly impacted. Nothing has made that fundamental...

/ September 2, 2020
Enterprise IT organizations to rely more than ever on MSPs

Enterprise IT organizations to rely more than ever on MSPs

If there ever was a notion that managed IT services were just for small businesses, it is certainly not the case now. In fact, more than three quarters of 100 IT directors (78 percent) working at companies with at least...

/ August 26, 2020
Widespread cloud configuration issues create opportunity for MSPs

Widespread cloud configuration issues create opportunity for MSPs

The crux of the problem with cloud security has very little to do with the platforms on which applications are deployed. The real issue is the amount of cybersecurity expertise the people deploying cloud applications don’t have. Most cloud applications...

/ August 19, 2020
Digital business initiatives spur demand for data management expertise

Digital business initiatives spur demand for data management expertise

Many organizations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have been accelerating their digital business transformation initiatives as part of an effort to continue operating at a time when it’s often not easy to  engage in person. The challenge those...

/ August 12, 2020
Second half of 2020 looks cloudier for MSPs

Second half of 2020 looks cloudier for MSPs

Now that managed service providers (MSPs) have weathered the initial economic storm brought on by the downturn in the global economy caused by COVID-19, many MSP leaders are wondering what’s next. There’s no doubt in the first half of the...

/ August 5, 2020
Organizations are betting on IT like never before

Organizations are betting on IT like never before

Historically, anytime there has been a sharp economic downturn, investments in IT have tended to suffer. Fortunately, the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be something altogether different. Recent financial results, from Intel and Microsoft especially,...

/ July 29, 2020
Digital workspaces are the next big opportunity for MSPs

Digital workspaces are the next big opportunity for MSPs

There’s much speculation about the degree to which employees will return to the workplace versus continuing to work from home. The truth of the matter is work as a concept will remain fluid. While more employees will be returning to...

/ July 22, 2020
In defense of MSP cybersecurity, as number of alerts rise

In defense of MSP cybersecurity, as number of alerts rise

It seems like about once a month now some government agency somewhere discovers there might be a potential issue with the cybersecurity of a managed service provider (MSP). The latest warning comes from the U.S. Secret Service, which sent out...

/ July 15, 2020