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.

Cloud infrastructure monitoring has become a critical customer pain point

Cloud infrastructure monitoring has become a critical customer pain point

Resistance to external service providers remains high within many internal IT organizations largely because of two issue: pride and fear. Too many IT teams are reluctant to admit they might need help. If they admit they do need help, they’re...

/ October 9, 2018
Data may be the new oil, but the refineries are broken

Data may be the new oil, but the refineries are broken

Data is clearly the new oil in the age of digital process transformation, but as it turns out, much work still needs to be done before that data can be refined. A survey of 200 CIOs conducted by ASG Technologies,...

/ October 4, 2018 / 1 Comment
SMBs prioritize finance, cloud computing, security, and digital marketing

SMBs prioritize finance, cloud computing, security, and digital marketing

While IT spending may not grow all that much in 2019, it turns out how those budgeted dollars are being allocated is shifting, especially among small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) A new survey of 700 SMBs published by the market research firm...

/ October 2, 2018
Open source technologies poised to transform delivery of network services

Open source technologies poised to transform delivery of network services

Increased confidence in a broad range of open source technologies suggests that the way networking services are delivered is about to fundamentally change. A survey of 150 professionals working across 98 different service providers conducted by Heavy Reading on behalf...

/ September 27, 2018
Threat hunting could be very good for managed services providers

Threat hunting could be very good for managed services providers

In their zeal to be seen to be doing more about cybersecurity, vendors are increasingly embedding threat monitoring capabilities within a variety of applications to make it easier to hunt for malware. But even when vendors decide to make threat detection...

/ September 25, 2018
CompTIA’s Emerging Technology List is all about the Benjamins

CompTIA’s Emerging Technology List is all about the Benjamins

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been identified as the top emerging opportunity for the channel by a community of solution providers set up by CompTIA, a non-profit industry association that focuses on emerging technologies. 

/ September 20, 2018
MSPs need to promote more creative approaches to funding IT projects

MSPs need to promote more creative approaches to funding IT projects

With overall IT spending in many cases expected to be flat in 2019 managed service providers (MSPs) will need to find more creative ways to free up funding within IT budgets that all too often are not allocated in an...

/ September 18, 2018
IT spending forecast for 2019 predicts stronger headwinds for MSPs

IT spending forecast for 2019 predicts stronger headwinds for MSPs

According to a survey of 780 IT decision makers in North America and Europe conducted by Spiceworks, a provider of IT management tools, IT headwinds appear to be growing stronger. The survey data suggests that MSPs may need to focus...

/ September 13, 2018
Biggest cybersecurity challenge MSPs face today is pride and prejudice

Biggest cybersecurity challenge MSPs face today is pride and prejudice

A recent survey of 250 senior IT leaders suggests that when it comes to cybersecurity, organizations are reluctant to completely outsource the management of their security operations centers (SOCs). The State of SOAR Report 2018 survey was conducted by Virtual...

/ September 11, 2018
MSPs have much at stake as SD-WAN wars heat up

MSPs have much at stake as SD-WAN wars heat up

Software-defined wide area networking has emerged as one of the fastest growing and hotly contested segments in all of IT. In fact, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger at the recent VMworld 2018 conference noted that NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud is the...

/ September 6, 2018