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.

5G network opportunity starts to come into focus for MSPs at CES

5G network opportunity starts to come into focus for MSPs at CES

5G networking was all the rage this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Despite all the sound and fury emanating from providers of carrier services and manufacturers of processors, such as Intel, very little has changed in terms of...

/ January 10, 2019
Shifting IT infrastructure landscape ultimately favors the MSP

Shifting IT infrastructure landscape ultimately favors the MSP

A new survey of 500 IT professionals published by INAP, a provider of managed services, suggests the rate at which application workloads will be shifting away from on-premises IT environments in 2019 is about to accelerate. The INAP survey finds...

/ January 8, 2019
Savvy MSPs track IT salaries to determine where to focus their efforts

Savvy MSPs track IT salaries to determine where to focus their efforts

The fundamental advantage any managed service provider (MSP) has is that they can aggregate the total cost of delivering an IT service across multiple customers. In contrast, an internal IT organization needs to absorb the entire cost for every full-time...

/ January 3, 2019 / 1 Comment
Edge computing emerges as major opportunity for MSPs in 2019

Edge computing emerges as major opportunity for MSPs in 2019

As the IT industry enters 2019, there’s a lot of excitement about edge computing. Of course, edge computing is not necessarily a new idea. IT organizations have been deploying applications in, for example, remote offices or on various classes of...

/ January 2, 2019
Reliance on MSPs expected to increase in 2019

Reliance on MSPs expected to increase in 2019

As hybrid cloud computing becomes more complex — thanks to rise of so-called cloud native computing models — there appears to be an increase in the willingness of IT organizations to rely on managed service providers (MSPs).

/ December 27, 2018 / 1 Comment
Twelve gifts MSPs want to receive this holiday season

Twelve gifts MSPs want to receive this holiday season

Managed service providers (MSPs) get excited about the holidays as much as anyone else. The only difference is that many MSPs will be keeping at least one eye on various consoles to make sure any potential disruption that might occur...

/ December 25, 2018
MSPs shifting towards closing the network automation loop

MSPs shifting towards closing the network automation loop

The race to automate the delivery of networking services is clearly on as the service provider industry heads into 2019. A new survey of 130 service providers conducted by the research firm Futorium suggests that the primary driver of those...

/ December 20, 2018
Definition of hybrid cloud computing is rapidly evolving

Definition of hybrid cloud computing is rapidly evolving

There may never come a day when all application workloads run in a public cloud. However, the rate at which application workloads will shift towards public clouds appears to be poised to accelerate in the next few years.

/ December 18, 2018
Linux Foundation is looking for a few good MSPs with networking expertise

Linux Foundation is looking for a few good MSPs with networking expertise

The Linux Foundation is looking for managed service providers (MSP) and systems integrators to start contributing to multiple projects seeking to transform networking using open source code.

/ December 13, 2018
DRaaS emerges as a red-hot opportunity for MSPs

DRaaS emerges as a red-hot opportunity for MSPs

Thanks to concerns about cybersecurity and increased complexity with the data environment itself, a report published today by Future Market Insights predicts the Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) market will grow in the U.S. from $2.45 billion to $8.4 billion by 2021.

/ December 11, 2018