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.

IT labor trends
How IT labor trends impact delivery of managed services

How IT labor trends impact delivery of managed services

The day after Labor Day in the U.S. seems like an appropriate moment for managed service providers to take stock of how IT labor trends and the cost of IT labor is impacting their business. A new U.S. Salary Report...

/ September 5, 2017
MSPs Should Benefit as IT Management Plane Moves to the Cloud

MSPs Should Benefit as IT Management Plane Moves to the Cloud

It’s usually easy to pick out which server management software being relied on to manage the local data center environment is located. Find the oldest, slowest server and chances are high that’s where the management software is running. After all,...

/ August 31, 2017
VMware Cloud on AWS Portends Significant Changes for MSPs

VMware Cloud on AWS Portends Significant Changes for MSPs

Now that VMware has made the first instance of its software stack available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud managed service providers (MSPs) that have been generating revenue by migrating application workloads from on-premises environments to AWS clouds...

/ August 29, 2017
digital business growth
Spike in private exchange traffic points to digital business growth

Spike in private exchange traffic points to digital business growth

The cloud is more than just another means of delivering IT services. As cloud computing continues to evolve, it’s starting to have a profound impact on how digital business processes are deployed and how companies ultimately operate. A new study...

/ August 24, 2017
data centers
MSPs need to evolve as data centers transform

MSPs need to evolve as data centers transform

Managed service providers need a two-pronged approach to managing data centers that takes into account both the short-term needs of customers and the rapid rate at which advances in IT management are occuring. When it comes to providing managed services...

/ August 22, 2017
MSPs Start to Tap into the Gig Economy

MSPs Start to Tap into the Gig Economy

EY, formally known as Ernst & Young, like a lot of managed service providers (MSPs) is sorely pressed to find the IT professionals it needs to work on specific projects. All told, the provider of consulting, auditing, and managed services...

/ August 17, 2017
cloud migration projects
Competition for cloud migration projects to intensify

Competition for cloud migration projects to intensify

The intensity of the competition between managed service providers vying to win cloud migration projects is about to increase by several notches. At an AWS Summits event in New York this week, Amazon Web Services rolled out a free AWS...

/ August 15, 2017
Public clouds versus private clouds
Parity between private and public clouds is being achieved

Parity between private and public clouds is being achieved

There are many reasons why organizations opt for public clouds, but cost is becoming less of a factor. A new survey published by 451 Research on behalf of VMware shows that 41 percent of 150 IT decision-makers surveyed claimed to...

/ August 10, 2017
digital business transformation
Budget allocations for digital business transformation reach into the millions

Budget allocations for digital business transformation reach into the millions

With all the hype about digital business transformation, many managed service providers have doubts about how much funding is really being allocated to these projects. Conducted by the market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of Couchbase, a new survey...

/ August 8, 2017
chief data officer
Rise of the chief data officer should benefit MSPs

Rise of the chief data officer should benefit MSPs

There’s been talk lately about data becoming “the new oil” because it’s the most valuable commodity an organization can possess. The challenge is that just like oil most data only becomes truly valuable once it gets refined. A new report...

/ August 3, 2017