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.

managed security services growth
Managed security services revenues to exceed $18 billion by 2025

Managed security services revenues to exceed $18 billion by 2025

A report published this week by ReportLinker forecasts that the global managed security services provider (MSSP) market will grow 17.5 percent on a compound annual basis through 2025 to be worth more than $18 billion. As impressive as that sounds,...

/ October 26, 2017
PC-as-a-Service
PC-as-a-Service alters how endpoints will be managed

PC-as-a-Service alters how endpoints will be managed

Most managed service providers are aware that PC manufacturers, including Dell, HP Inc, and Lenovo, are trying to shift customers away from buying PCs to procuring them as a service. These PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS) programs enable IT organizations to treat PCs...

/ October 24, 2017
artificial intelligence
MSPs need to construct data pipelines to drive artificial intelligence

MSPs need to construct data pipelines to drive artificial intelligence

While there’s plenty of fear about the impact artificial intelligence (AI) might have on demand for labor, there’s just as much anticipation. Consumer applications are leading the way as usual. As end users engage more with Siri from Apple or Alexa...

/ October 19, 2017
Application workloads
Application workloads moving to the cloud at a faster pace should benefit MSPs

Application workloads moving to the cloud at a faster pace should benefit MSPs

Savvy managed service providers keep one eye on where existing application workloads are deployed today and the other on where new ones are likely to be deployed tomorrow. A new report from Gartner estimates that as of 2016 approximately 17...

/ October 17, 2017
data platforms
Rapid proliferation of data platforms creates significant opportunities for MSPs

Rapid proliferation of data platforms creates significant opportunities for MSPs

Increased complexity is generally a good thing for managed service providers because it adds more stress to IT environments, which usually creates demand for additional managed services. Lately, the greatest complexity involves the number of places data gets stored. Once...

/ October 12, 2017
Service level agreement
SLAs are key to expanding available market for managed services

SLAs are key to expanding available market for managed services

Over the years the size of the available market for managed services has stubbornly remained less than 25 percent of the total IT market. The reason for this is two-fold. There are a large number of organizations that don’t view...

/ October 10, 2017
Fueling digital business transformation
Gartner: Digital business transformation to fuel IT services spending increase

Gartner: Digital business transformation to fuel IT services spending increase

The more things change, the larger the opportunity for managed services providers becomes. At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2017 conference this week, Gartner predicted that not only will worldwide spending on IT increase 4.3 percent in 2017, but spending on IT services will...

/ October 5, 2017
Cloud migration costs
Cost of cloud migrations limiting adoption

Cost of cloud migrations limiting adoption

Helping migrate applications into the cloud has been a boon to managed service providers. But a new survey of 500 IT decision makers conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Virtustream, the cloud service provider arm of Dell Technologies, suggests...

/ October 3, 2017
Cloud security education
MSPs need to focus on cloud security education

MSPs need to focus on cloud security education

It’s already been well established that the No. 1 concern organizations have about deploying application workloads in the cloud is cloud security. But, it turns out there’s also significant confusion about who is responsible for IT security on a public...

/ September 28, 2017
managed services demand
Managed services demand driven by need to augment, not replace internal IT

Managed services demand driven by need to augment, not replace internal IT

Now that more application workloads than ever are running in either a public cloud or a third-party data center, it appears IT organizations are starting to appreciate the value of managed services. A new Voice of the Enterprise survey of...

/ September 26, 2017