Other statistics support this claim. A recent benchmark study by Thinkstrategies and the MSPAlliance indicated that the vast majority of MSP partners saw their revenue grow in the past 12 months, and predicted that this trend only will increase as the need for vulnerability management and other security services becomes more prevalent.
"There's always a need for someone to handle security," said Gavin Garbutt, chairman and co-founder of N-Able, a provider of management software for MSPs. "If it's cheaper for solution providers to be the ones to handle it [at a particular customer], I'd say that customer is making a smart business decision."
At last week's CMP XChange conference in Chicago, a panel of recent MSP converts debated the pros and cons of jumping on the managed services bandwagon. Many of the newest MSSPs reported that they converted their businesses to the new model so they could enjoy lower overhead, freeing up workers, economies of scale.
Others, such as David Balcar, president of Network Design and Integration, Houston, said they made the switch in response to customer demand.
"I don't think we ever looked at [managed services] as a profit thing," he said, noting that his company first introduced managed services into its arsenal last year. "Our customers just asked us for it. They thought it was the cheaper and more efficient way to go."
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
