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.

MSPs should start setting expectations for 5G wireless networking services now

MSPs should start setting expectations for 5G wireless networking services now

The time when managed service providers (MSPs) will need to sit down with customers to have a serious conversation concerning the rollout of 5G wireless networks has arrived. While there’s already a massive amount of hype surrounding 5G networks, cities...

/ July 18, 2019 / 1 Comment
Early detection systems for earthquakes needs IT industry support

Early detection systems for earthquakes needs IT industry support

There’s nothing like an earthquake to provide the literal jolt often required to motivate businesses and IT leaders to think more about disaster preparedness. A recent series of powerful earthquakes in Southern California has reminded everyone just how vulnerable businesses...

/ July 16, 2019
Smart MSPs follow the data in the age of the cloud

Smart MSPs follow the data in the age of the cloud

Despite all the momentum cloud computing has enjoyed for the past ten years, around 80 percent of all applications are still running in on-premises IT environments. The trend that managed service providers (MSPs) need to close track is the rate...

/ July 11, 2019
MSPs need to make some tough strategic decisions

MSPs need to make some tough strategic decisions

There’s an old African proverb that notes when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. These days in the land of IT, the elephants that are doing the fighting are cloud service providers and manufacturers of traditional IT infrastructure...

/ July 9, 2019 / 2 Comments
Number of data protection officers increases dramatically in wake of GDPR

Number of data protection officers increases dramatically in wake of GDPR

It seems that a chief data protection officer is not only an official job responsibility, it’s a necessity. It’s estimated there are now more than half a million data protection officers in Europe alone, one year after the General Data...

/ July 4, 2019
Windows Registry backup tempest provides MSPs with an opportunity for conversation

Windows Registry backup tempest provides MSPs with an opportunity for conversation

Microsoft kicked off a small firestorm this week when it was revealed that the registry in Windows 10 has not been backed up since last October. Turns out, Microsoft decided to turn off that feature as part of an effort...

/ July 2, 2019
Open source community flexes edge computing muscle

Open source community flexes edge computing muscle

The open source community signaled its intention to dominate edge computing during a KubeCon + CloudNative + Open Source Summit China conference this week in Shanghai. Arpit Joshipura, general manager for networking, automation, edge, and IoT at the Linux Foundation,...

/ June 27, 2019
Fast growing SD-WAN market continues to rapidly evolve

Fast growing SD-WAN market continues to rapidly evolve

A new report from the market research firm Futorium finds adoption of software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) is occurring at faster rates than initially appreciated. The research report now estimates $2.2 billion in SD-WAN platform and tools revenue will be...

/ June 25, 2019
MSPs need to start embracing Kubernetes now

MSPs need to start embracing Kubernetes now

Now that the Kubernetes platform upon which most cloud-native applications are being built has turned five, the level of Kubernetes adoption within organizations is starting to spike. However, Kubernetes still represents a significant challenge to provision and maintain. Kubernetes may...

/ June 20, 2019
Survey identifies network troubleshooting as the highest IT priority

Survey identifies network troubleshooting as the highest IT priority

With the rise of cloud computing, applications have never been more distributed. However, the network relied on to access those applications is simply not able to meet the performance levels those applications require. A survey of 160 networking and IT...

/ June 18, 2019