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If you’ve spoken with one of your customers lately, you’ve likely heard common difficulties they are having when managing IT resources. In particular, security teams lacking in staff and necessary skills, yet expected to drive consistent results regardless.

Over the past two years, this lack of internal IT skills among end users has become the primary catalyst for MSP demand. When we surveyed 50 channel partners across Europe last year, we discovered that a majority (69 percent) cited customer skills shortage as the main driver for managed services uptake. The leading factor in 2018 was reduction of CAPEX and other costs (61 percent).

Unfortunately, these circumstances aren’t likely to change any time soon. In the meantime, customers are turning to partners like you to alleviate their challenges and help their security teams maintain a secure network.

With time and resources at an all-time low, the last thing that end user security teams should be spending time on is menial, repetitive tasks such as network management, security remediation, and patch updates. Their time is precious and such tasks shouldn’t continue to weigh them down.

Even if they were to suddenly have significantly more time on their hands, IT teams would still be held back by their limited numbers. Shortages in skills and finances prevent them from growing their team to be able to cover all the tasks before them. However, they can address how they operate to ensure better output.

What are they looking for?

Businesses are focused on to easing their burden, shedding mindless tasks, and using their limited resources to create and maintain a secure environment throughout their organization. That’s where managed services come in.

MSPs can take over the finding and testing of the latest patches and software updates as they become available and provide continuous insights into security levels that need addressing. This can free SME teams of repetitive routine tasks and give them the ability to manage and monitor security throughout a network.

If you’re not already providing a managed security service for your end user customers, or you know a potential customer that would benefit greatly from this level of support, I urge you to start that conversation today. When offering the ability to lessen the load of today’s IT teams, I guarantee you’ll be met by nothing but interest and gratitude — with sales to follow.

Photo: Andrii Yalanskyi / Shutterstock


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Jason Howells

Posted by Jason Howells

Jason Howells is the EMEA Sales Director for Barracuda MSP. Email Jason at: jason.howells@barracudamsp.com or connect with him on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhowells/).

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