Assessing The Current And Future States Of Managed Services

By Michael Williams, Logically

Every MSP should have one goal in mind: to help their customers achieve their business objectives through the use of excellent IT services. In order to achieve this goal, MPSs need to work with their customers as a trusted IT ally, providing expertise in emerging and critical technologies as they relate to the core IT, cloud, cybersecurity, auditing, and compliance.

However, many of today’s MSPs are working with a set of fragmented tools, which are unable to effectively provide the level of support customers need. And, while information technology is—more than ever—a critical component of the operations of small to midsize businesses, it’s still being under-invested in, according to the 2019 Small and Midsize Business IT Study, commissioned by Logically.

The survey revealed a staggering number of IT problems that companies struggle with—and what they’re doing (or not doing) about it. Probably the most shocking result, though, was that 60 percent of business decision makers (“BDMs”) would rather lose half their company’s revenue growth for next year than lose half their company’s data.

The majority of business decision makers recognize that IT is strategically and operationally critical, yet two-thirds of BDMs (66 percent) agree their companies’ investments in IT are not keeping pace with their growing technological needs.

Based on these results, we see that MSPs serve an incredibly important role for businesses, but there are still barriers that prevent businesses from taking full advantage of everything in our toolbox. The future of MSPs, then, must look to address these concerns, which typically come down to affordability of services. That’s where automation comes in, which we have achieved with our OpLogic platform. It’s our proprietary technology that uses AI to monitor and resolve security vulnerabilities and other technical problems on a self-healing basis.

In addition, you can’t be an MSP today without a comprehensive security suite of solutions. Forty-three percent of small and midsize businesses say that threat protection is the most important service they need from their MSP. SMBs have to protect themselves from a very complex range of attacks including phishing, malware, ransomware, security breaches, web-based attacks and more. Only 14 percent of SMBs feel they are adequately protected. To make things worse, traditional staple tools like antivirus are no longer good enough and can’t protect against the millions of malware variants created every month and “zero-day” attacks.  Modern MSPs like Logically include advanced best practice security tools into their base managed services offering. The best MSPs offer endpoint detection and response (EDR) and Security Information Event Management (SIEM) solutions combined with a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) in order to prevent against modern threats and to automate remediation in case of a breach.

By further leveraging automation, we can drive down the cost of the overall support mechanism for MSPs while adding additional tools and augmenting our services with senior level consulting services. We are always looking to drive down costs for our customers without compromising quality – and our goal is to do it for less than everyone else.

Moving forward, the ever-changing and challenging IT landscape will require a consolidated and centralized approach to meet the increasingly complex needs of small to midsized businesses. Viewing our customers’ IT needs through a “single pane of glass” is the first step toward managing the complexities and requirements necessary for the future (while keeping a sharp eye on what our customers need now). Our strategy is to grow organically and acquire other best-in-class MSPs that will help us run faster and stronger to meet our customers’ needs. Our customers trust us with their critical IT requirements, and we are dedicated to providing them with the services and technologies that enable them to succeed.

About The Author

Michael Williams is Chief Strategy Officer at Logically, a coast-to-coast managed IT services company.