A survey of 1,000 technology leaders conducted by Logicalis finds well over half (57 percent) expect to work more closely with managed service providers (MSPs) to achieve digital business transformation goals.
According to the research, a third of respondents already work with MSPs to deliver digital services, and nearly three quarters (74 percent) expect to increase spending on outsourced IT and managed services in the year ahead.
Half of the respondents said that the right MSP can help to free up resources so that CIOs can focus on core strategic priorities. Many said that an MSP can provide better access to skills (41 percent) and improved visibility of cost and performance (35 percent).
A majority spend more time innovating, nearly double from 2022
More than three quarters of the survey respondents (77 percent) said that despite an uncertain economy their organizations continue to invest in digital business transformation initiatives. Well over half (57 percent) said that building and operating new digital platforms is a core part of their job.
A full 81 percent are spending more time on innovation compared to a year ago with nearly half (46 percent) reporting that innovation is part of how their job performance is measured. A total of 81 percent of CIOs said they saw a ‘significant increase’ in the amount of time they spend on strategic planning in 2022, while 80 percent noted that business strategy will become a bigger part of their role in the next two years.
IT Leaders’ view on MSPs are evolving
IT leaders such as CIOs are playing a larger role these days because many digital business transformation initiatives span multiple business processes. A single business unit within an organization can’t, of its own accord, drive the requisite level of re-engineering required. Many IT leaders that were essentially sidelined in recent years as individual departments drove more IT spending, are now reasserting control.
The thing that is changing most dramatically is the way those IT leaders view MSPs. Historically, many IT leaders would see the MSP as a competing provider of services. In an age that finds most organizations still struggling to find and retain IT talent, there is now a much greater willingness, especially when it comes to cybersecurity, to rely on MSPs to fill the gap.
The degree to which various gaps emerge will naturally differ by organization so MSPs will be asked to provide a range of services on demand as digital business transformation initiatives wax and wane. Most organizations are never entirely sure what capabilities they will require at the start of a project and the internal IT staff is likely to lose key personnel during the life of the project. MSPs need to be prepared to step in whenever required. On the plus side, once those tasks are assigned to an MSP it becomes less likely they will be transferred back to an internal IT staff member.
Regardless of how MSPs get involved, digital business transformation initiatives are the most strategic IT projects any organization is going to be engaged in. If MSPs want to stay relevant to their customers, it’s critical for them to be involved because otherwise they are simply a provider of a commodity IT service that could easily be swapped for another.
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