We are in a far different world from the old days when a hack was just some kid with a hoodie showing how clever he was. Now, hacks are far more serious, perpetrated by true criminals who are sometimes backed by governments. It’s a different day and, for businesses to stay relevant and viable, there needs to be a new mindset. And that’s where we, as the solution providers, come in.
Men outnumber women in this industry by something on the order of 8 to 2, and the margin is even wider in the c-suite. By and large, we’re the ones approving salaries, greenlighting recruits, and setting the cultural tones of our companies. That requires us to be involved in solving the pay gap, recruiting more women into the field, and most importantly, driving cultures that demand equal respect across gender lines. None of that will happen if we’re not talking about it.
The lack of women and minorities in the channel is such a complex problem. We can’t keep forgetting about diversifying the channel – it has to be an ongoing conversation about how our industry can find better ways to recruit talented women and minorities and help them advance to leadership positions.
I spent a few days in Dallas last week with my friends at HTG. I try to attend as many of the group’s quarterly meetings as I can, because there’s no better place to become immersed in the MSP community. Honest and transparent conversations with the leaders of operationally mature—and actively maturing—managed services businesses are what direct our MSP Insights and Channel Executive editorial content.
There’s been no shortage of press about the IT labor situation in India. In case you haven’t been following, here’s a quick summation. The country’s outsourced IT shops are like our brick-and-mortar stores. There are too many of them. They’re occupied by too many employees for the times. They both face threats posed by automation and Amazon, respectively, nemeses whose names are nearly synonymous.
As VAR and MSP sales and marketing organizations catch the buyer persona buzz, are client personas and user experiences being overlooked?
When MSPs seek out new tools and capabilities to add to their portfolio of managed services, they shouldn’t overlook the opportunity to benefit from the advice of their current vendors. Many, from my experience, still don’t. This is a marketplace small enough that many of us know one another very, very well. Successful vendors inevitably learn the lay of the land and get to know their neighbors, with most participating at the same annual MSP events around the country (which, even before a expo hall cocktail, have collegial atmospheres). Because of this, they usually possess a particularly deep knowledge of who operates out of the same wheelhouse as their own, but also – importantly – those vendors that offer adjacent and complementary solutions that will save MSPs (and their clients) headache down the road.
It may be easier in the short-term for an MSP to standardize on one cloud provider, but a multi-cloud sales strategy is the more lucrative option in the long run.
Doug Grimm sat down with MSPinsights and VARinsights to talk about the biggest tech opportunity for MSPs and VARs.
Jim Hocking sat down with MSPinsights to talk about MSP pricing and the most common mistake he sees MSPs make when it comes to pricing their services.
Dreading your company’s annual kick-off because you can’t really show how your channel is performing – and suffering from a lack of ideas on how to truly accelerate your indirect revenue? You’re not alone. These are common symptoms of having selected the wrong channel management solution.
First popularized in terminology several years ago, threat intelligence means many things to many people. This is due, in part, to the wide variety of producers, consumers, formats, intended uses, and quality of this type of data. This wide variety of definitions is exacerbated by the spectrum of qualitative and quantitative data called threat intelligence.
Implementing network, endpoint, and server security while backing up data and keeping network users aware of threats can go a long way toward keeping your company’s data safe.
Every MSP should be looking for additional services that are easy to setup, simple to manage, achieve predictable results, and generate consistent revenue. Backup-as-a-Service is one of the logical “next steps” for every MSP that is already responsible for the care of their customer’s most critical systems. Some simply haven’t made the jump yet (e.g. the customer is still managing their own backups), while others just haven’t moved their management of backups to a recurring service model.
| ConnectWise is the leading business management solution designed exclusively for technology organizations, such as IT solution providers, MSPs, software companies, hardware/software resellers, and System Integrators. |
SolarWinds® MSP delivers comprehensive, scalable IT service management solutions to empower MSPs of every size and scale worldwide to create highly efficient and profitable businesses that drive a measurable competitive advantage.
Taylor Business Group is an executive coaching and peer group firm that focuses on IT Solution Providers and Copier Dealers. Founded in 2001, Taylor has brought efficiencies and higher profits to IT Solution Providers through a focused effort in delivering best practices to the Service Provider and Copier Dealer's service, sales and administrative functions.
The ASCII Group is a vibrant community of independent MSPs, VARS and solution providers in North America. The organization offers members leveraged purchasing programs, education and training, knowledge sharing among peers, discounts on business services, and more. Founded in 1984 by Alan Weinberger, ASCII is the oldest and largest group of independent IT solution providers, integrators and VARS in the world.
HTG is an international consulting, coaching and peer group organization that cultivates success by igniting personal, leadership, business and legacy transformation. Members navigate their journey with world-class HTG consultants and facilitators who value sharing wisdom, providing accountability and building meaningful relationships, Igniting Transformation™ every step of the way. HTG invites you to explore the program that suits you best, and apply today to begin experiencing The HTG Way.
SherWeb has been helping businesses around the world work smarter in the cloud since 1998. Our cloud solutions help companies be more agile in today’s competitive market and trim IT costs.
Why checklists are the tool of choice highly efficient task management.
Documentation is an area of your business over which you have full control, that delivers to you competitive advantage, if you know how to use it to its maximum potential.
The importance of understanding the value of centralized backup and demonstrating it to your clients.
Many of us are surviving on a day-to-day basis. We barely have time to plan for what we’re going to do this afternoon so tomorrow seems overwhelming. It's a recipe for disaster but, somehow, we embrace this chaos! Many “gurus” out there use the word “hustle” as a badge of honor but us amateurs tend to embrace it as an excuse to get away with making stuff up as we go along. But why?
In the digital age, businesses face key decisions regarding the access and recovery of their data. It’s essential for both businesses and MSPs to understand the basics of the two different types of data access and recovery options: backup as a service (BaaS) and disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). Here, we’ll explain these two options as well as how they factor into a company’s data and recovery plans.
