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.

AWS partners
Standard AWS Enterprise Contract heralds wave of change for AWS partners

Standard AWS Enterprise Contract heralds wave of change for AWS partners

The coming year promises to be one of great change for managed service providers that partner with Amazon Web Services. At an AWS Global Partner Summit this week, AWS revealed that it is testing a standard Enterprise Contract that it...

/ November 30, 2017
cloud services
Increased consumption of wider variety of cloud services bodes well for MSPs

Increased consumption of wider variety of cloud services bodes well for MSPs

New data from 451 Research shows the cloud computing market is on track to grow from $28.1 billion this year to $53.3 billion by 2021. That represents a 19 percent compound annual growth rate. But more importantly, the mix of...

/ November 28, 2017
GDPR compliance
Cloud Security Alliance publishes GDPR compliance guideline

Cloud Security Alliance publishes GDPR compliance guideline

Compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) is moving from a theoretical construct to an existential threat as the May 25, 2018, deadline rapidly approaches. To provide service providers and their customers some guidance on how to achieve...

/ November 22, 2017 / 1 Comment
ONAP
ONAP promises to transform delivery of cloud and networking services

ONAP promises to transform delivery of cloud and networking services

ONAP, a framework that’s being spearheaded by The Linux Foundation and promises to transform how network and cloud services are delivered, was made generally available yesterday. The Amsterdam release of the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) combines software-defined networking (SDN)...

/ November 21, 2017
Multi-cloud computing
MSPs need to size the scope of multi-cloud computing opportunity

MSPs need to size the scope of multi-cloud computing opportunity

Usage of public cloud computing services is fairly widespread, but a new survey of 130 IT professionals in organizations with more than 500 employees conducted by OpsRamp, a provider of an IT operations management platform, sheds some interesting light on...

/ November 16, 2017
multi-cloud
Multi-cloud computing raises new management challenges

Multi-cloud computing raises new management challenges

Even though most IT organizations are still a long way from mastering the management of public clouds, a significant percentage are already employing two or more clouds. A new survey conducted by the research firm opinion.life on behalf of BMC...

/ November 15, 2017
Microsoft Office 365
Long March to Microsoft Office 365 in the Cloud Remains Ahead

Long March to Microsoft Office 365 in the Cloud Remains Ahead

One of the primary drivers of the shift to cloud computing has been Microsoft Office 365, which delivers the widely used Microsoft productivity and email applications as a cloud service. But, a survey of 1,168 IT professionals in the U.S.,...

/ November 9, 2017
OpenStack momentum
OpenStack adoption picks up momentum

OpenStack adoption picks up momentum

Usage of the open source OpenStack cloud management framework has been limited mostly to cloud services providers due to the complexity involved in standing up these IT environments. But, a new report from 451 Research published this week suggests that...

/ November 7, 2017
Internet of Things
MSPs need to take the long view on Internet of Things

MSPs need to take the long view on Internet of Things

There’s a lot of hype these days surrounding anything associated with the Internet of Things (IoT). But despite the hype a survey published this week by Dresner Advisory Services finds that only 32 percent of the respondents deemed IoT to...

/ November 2, 2017
Managed security services
MSPs fight to gain ground with managed security services opportunities

MSPs fight to gain ground with managed security services opportunities

Managed security services clearly represent a significant opportunity for managed service providers of all sizes. The most immediate issue, however, is the timing, not the eventual size of the market. In fact, more organizations than ever are looking to rely...

/ October 31, 2017