
A need to optimize cloud spending opens the door for MSPs
The more business and IT leaders worry about cloud costs, the more relevant managed service providers become. As far as cloud spending is concerned, the level of financial oversight being applied by organizations is slim to none. In the name...

Opportunity for MSPs to plug 5G wireless networking gap emerges
At the Mobile World Congress 2019 conference, many attendees are excited about everything related to next-generation 5G wireless networks. Not only do these networks promise to deliver several orders of magnitude of increased network bandwidth, but a wide range of...

Data center modernization is top issue for IT organizations
There’s an old saying that posits the key to success is to discover where a customer’s pain points are and solve that problem. A survey of 218 IT professionals published this week by the research firm Futuriom suggests that the...

AWS follows Microsoft’s lead in raising the partner bar for MSPs
Whenever any IT product or service starts to become widely accessible at too low of a price, it’s usually not long before IT vendors look to constrain the number of routes to market to ensure profitability. After nearly a decade...

How savvy MSPs can overcome internal IT team objections
Managed service providers (MSPs) regularly encounter internal IT teams that are firmly convinced they can provide any IT service better and at a lower cost. The cost comparison usually doesn’t include the true fully-loaded cost of hiring a full-time employee...

Coming to terms with offering managed security services
Cybersecurity has increasingly become table stakes for not just new projects, but also retroactively existing ones. Many managed service providers (MSPs) are now being required by customers to layer additional cybersecurity services on top of both new equipment and a...

Digital business transformation drives IT modernization opportunities
Rising investments in digital business transformation initiatives are starting to deliver some surprising dividends for IT services providers in the form of modernization opportunities. Spiceworks, on behalf of CenturyLink a provider of telecommunications and managed services, recently conducted a survey...

How the rise of big data and AI will impact MSPs
IT organizations are starting to signal their intent to consolidate all the analytics applications they need to support around a common pool of “big data” whenever possible. A recent report from Dresner Advisory Services finds 60 percent of respondents would...

Tight market for IT labor hampers MSP expansion plans
The single biggest inhibitor of growth for most managed service providers is staffing. Without access to additional talent, MSPs not only find it challenging to extend the size and scope of the existing services they offer, it becomes next to...

Gartner forecasts dramatic shift in IT spending through the end of the decade
After seeing a 5.6 percent growth in IT services spending in the last year, Gartner forecasted that the spending on IT services will grow a more modest 4.7 and 4.8 percent in 2019 and 2020, respectively.