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.

VMware Cloud on AWS momentum starts to swell

VMware Cloud on AWS momentum starts to swell

Following a few early VMware missteps, it would appear that cloud momentum surrounding VMware, on the eve of the annual VMworld conference next week, is finally starting to increase. A survey of 1,156 IT and business professionals published today by...

/ August 22, 2019 / 1 Comment
Targeted ransomware attacks creates new opportunities and challenges

Targeted ransomware attacks creates new opportunities and challenges

Every successful high-profile ransomware attack that winds up gaining a lot of mainstream media coverage is generally good for managed service providers (MSPs) that specialize in helping organizations recover from such attacks. In the last few days, coverage of ransomware...

/ August 21, 2019
Opportunities for MSPs abound as IoT adoption starts to mount

Opportunities for MSPs abound as IoT adoption starts to mount

A pair of studies suggest that the Internet of Things (IoT) opportunity for managed service providers (MSP) in the months and years ahead is about to increase, as organizations start to significantly increase their level of investment. A new report...

/ August 15, 2019
Survey shines light on chronic need for actionable cybersecurity intelligence

Survey shines light on chronic need for actionable cybersecurity intelligence

A survey of 577 IT and IT security practitioners in the U.S. conducted by The Ponemon Institute on behalf of AttackIQ, a provider of security testing tools, suggests there’s a major opportunity for managed service providers (MSPs) to provide security...

/ August 13, 2019
Software licensing chaos creates unique opportunity for MSPs

Software licensing chaos creates unique opportunity for MSPs

It’s no secret that software licensing models across the IT industry are chaotic. Software providers typically offer a mix of licensing options, spanning everything from subscriptions and usage-based licensing models, to traditional perpetual licenses that enable organizations to continue to...

/ August 8, 2019
Fallout from high profile breaches will have major impact on IT service providers

Fallout from high profile breaches will have major impact on IT service providers

A recent series of high-profile data breaches is likely to have a profound impact on IT service providers for years to come.

/ August 6, 2019
The disconnect between cost of email security and effectiveness of internal IT

The disconnect between cost of email security and effectiveness of internal IT

The single biggest challenge in selling a managed IT service has very little to do with the technology involved. Rather, it’s usually the pride of the internal IT organization that gets in the way of a more rational decision business...

/ August 1, 2019
Cloud computing growth rates raise cautionary note of concern

Cloud computing growth rates raise cautionary note of concern

The two most recent financial reports from Amazon and Microsoft are raising concerns over the rate at which adoption of cloud services will continue to grow. Amazon revealed Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue grew 37 percent, to $8.4 billion in...

/ July 31, 2019
IT modernization initiatives will require MSPs to place some big bets

IT modernization initiatives will require MSPs to place some big bets

A new wave of IT modernization initiatives is creating opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs) as IT organizations struggle to master the emerging technologies.

/ July 25, 2019
Microsoft is betting on a common data model to win the cloud wars

Microsoft is betting on a common data model to win the cloud wars

If there was one theme that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella consistently emphasized during his keynote at last week’s Microsoft Inspire conference, it was how critical Microsoft’s Common Data Model will be in ultimately differentiating them as a cloud service provider....

/ July 23, 2019