Kaseya Measures Link Between Economic Uncertainty and MSPs

Kaseya, a Miami-based company specializing in IT and cybersecurity infrastructure management software for small-to-medium businesses, has released its 2023 IT Operations Report, which surveyed over 1,300 technology leaders running internal IT at organizations worldwide in order to get insights on their top priorities and challenges.

According to the survey, businesses are looking to outsource more IT services to MSPs amidst increasing economic uncertainty. They are also seeking to replace legacy tools with solutions that are faster and more responsive to evolving needs to stay competitive, tap into new markets and reduce operational costs. In addition, organizations are placing a strong emphasis on cybersecurity, and despite economic conditions, they are focused on acquiring talent in this area either through internal hires or outsourcing to MSPs who provide cybersecurity services.

Almost 80% of respondents said they outsource one or more IT services to an MSP, up from 64% in 2022. The top three functions that are being outsourced are IT security, network monitoring and cloud infrastructure management. Other services are endpoint management, compliance reporting and onboarding/offboarding of users and devices.

Other notable findings revolved around integration – about a quarter of survey participants reported the integration of IT documentation within the endpoint management tool as most beneficial. When it comes to IT management tools, respondents listed their top five as: help desk/ticketing, endpoint management, IT documentation/knowledge management, network management/network performance monitoring and endpoint detection and response (EDR).

The report states that while budgets and resources may be shrinking, workloads are not. Sixty-two percent of respondents reported having to frequently work on holidays or weekends. Nearly half of them confessed to pulling an all-nighter while about 40% admitted to working 50+ hour weeks consecutively.

About 40% of respondents, around the same as last year, said their IT budgets increased. Yet, 18% of those surveyed cited a decrease in their 2023 budget – 8% more than last year. When it comes to budgets being slashed, 40% said software spending would be cut; 35% think it’s hardware spending; and 29% believe it will be training and certifications that get cut.

Achieving business growth tops the list of budget drivers, said 32% of respondents. Replacing outdated IT infrastructure was identified by 29% of respondents and security incidents or concerns by 28%.

Strengthening cybersecurity and upgrading legacy systems biggest challenges.
Relentless cybercriminals pose continuous threats leading to 40% of respondents citing cybersecurity and data protection as the foremost IT challenge in 2023. Legacy systems hampering growth and innovation were reported as the second biggest challenge by 24% of respondents.

Channel Impact^®
Overworked IT professionals are investing more in automation and integrations while many are also outsourcing more to MSPs, despite economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, budgets are being allocated to strengthening cybersecurity and updating legacy systems.