A new study by OpsRamp on the state of the Managed Service Providers (MSP) market concludes that MSPs face a market of bountiful opportunities but must prepare for this growth by embracing complex technologies like hybrid cloud management, root cause analysis and automation.
With digital transformation initiatives accelerating in the wake of the pandemic even as internal IT departments wrestle with the Great Resignation, 2022 is shaping up to be another banner year for MSPs. the survey shows that MSPs are bullish on growth, both for their own businesses and in the economy as a whole. 85% of survey respondents are either extremely positive (39%) or somewhat positive (46%) about growth prospects in 2022.
One reason for this optimism could be that businesses will keep investing in technology to stay ahead of their competitors, especially as digital transformation accelerates in the wake of the pandemic. And most organizations will need outside help (from service providers) to keep their IT environments and services humming smoothly, especially as the Great Resignation takes its toll on internal staffing.
MSPs aren't just bullish about overall economic growth. They believe this will translate into an expansion of their own businesses. Nearly half of respondents (46%) expect their managed services business to grow more than 10% this year, with another 44% expecting growth rates of between 2 and 9%. Just 7% expect their managed services business to flatline in 2022 and only 3% expect to see a decline in revenue. But that doesn't mean that complex IT problems will get any easier to solve.
Root Cause Analysis Both a Challenge and Opportunity
One of those complex IT problems is finding the root cause of IT performance issues. The survey indicated that faster root cause analysis was both the top IT monitoring challenge faced by MSPs, cited by 46% of respondents, as well as the No. 1 AIOps capability critical to winning deals, cited by 48% of respondents.
It's About the Cloud, and the Network
We asked MSPs to name just one technology that would get the most traction in 2022. Managed cloud services and managed network services tied for the top spot, each garnering 20% of responses, outpacing managed security services, at 16%. IT infrastructure monitoring was the clear winner for the most critical technology needed to manage delivery of those services, selected by 55% of respondents, followed by network performance monitoring at 47%.
Don't Just Monitor, Automate!
While monitoring is critical for service delivery management, MSPs are looking to do more than just keep an eye on service performance. More than half of all respondents cited the ability to automate routine tasks as the monitoring capability that was most critical to winning deals. Nearly half cited hybrid monitoring as the most critical monitoring capability as MSPs' manage workloads running both in the cloud and on-premises. They need monitoring tools that can handle both, as well as automate configuration changes and IT processes.
MSPs are competing in a growing but challenging market for managed IT services. While customers are prepared to spend more money for the right services, their needs are growing increasingly complex along with their IT environments.
The Latest
The development of the Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence framework will now serve as a foundation for further research and new developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) ...
IT teams feel overwhelmed by too many tools that do not provide a unified view of the entire IT infrastructure, according to The Shift to Unified Observability: Reasons, Requirements, and Returns, a new independent survey conducted by IDC in collaboration with Riverbed ...
Legacy systems require a great deal of a prior knowledge, and then significant configuration, for anomaly detection to work effectively. ML and AI are beginning to change that, but it's important to really validate the claims of any NPM solution ...
Successful insight into the performance of a company's networks starts with effective network performance management (NPM) tools. However, with the plethora of options it can be overwhelming for IT teams to choose the right one. Here are 10 essential questions to ask before selecting an NPM tool ...
Hybrid and remote work environments have been growing significantly in the past few years. As individuals move away from traditional office settings in today's new remote and hybrid environments, many operational issues such as poor visibility into asset status and refreshes, unaccounted assets, and overspending on software are becoming a bigger challenge for IT departments ...
MLOps or Machine Learning Operations are a combination of best processes and practices that businesses use to run AI successfully ... While it is a relatively new field, MLOps is a collective effort that captured the interest of data scientists, DevOps engineers, AI enthusiasts, and IT ...
The data is in: enterprises are not happy with their managed service providers (MSPs) and cloud service providers (CSPs). According to the latest CloudBolt Industry Insights report, Filling the Gap: Service Providers' Increasingly Important Role in Multi-Cloud Success, 80% are so unsatisfied with their existing MSP and/or CSP, they are actively looking to replace them within 12 months ...
The last two years have accelerated massive changes in how we work, do business, and engage with customers. According to Pega research, nearly three out of four employees (71%) feel their job complexity continues to rise as customer demands increase, and employees at all levels feel overloaded with information, systems, and processes that make it difficult to adapt to these new challenges and meet their customers' growing needs ...
Investing in employees will always be smart business. And right now, investing in employees means giving people the resources — and ability — to optimize performance ... For pretty much every company, that means delivering the digital tools necessary to facilitate seamless, secure, user-friendly access and connectivity ...
Digital transformation can be the difference between becoming the next Netflix and becoming the next Blockbuster Video. With corporate survival on the line, "digital transformation" is no longer merely an impressive buzzword to throw around in boardrooms. It's the ticket for entry into the digital era, a fundamental business strategy for every modern company ...
