Monday Morning Impact – June 3

Study: Managed Service Providers in Growth Mode

Datto, Inc., a Connecticut-based provider of IT solutions delivered through MSPs, has released a new research report showing that managed service providers are raising their game with regard to helping their customers get the most out of technology.

As IT plays a growing role in the success of SMBs everywhere, IT service providers are adjusting their business model to include more managed services. The survey found that more than 80 percent of MSPs report recurring services driving a portion of their revenue, highlighting an industry shift from IT service providers solely modeled on ad-hoc services to becoming more strategic advisors to their SMB clients. Nearly half of respondents stated that more than 50 percent of their revenue is a result of recurring services.

To better capture managed services revenue, MSPs are expanding their portfolios with services they might not traditionally think to offer on a recurring contract, such as Networking as a service. In addition to taking on a more strategic role and expanding their solutions sets, 56 percent of MSPs specialize in services for a particular industry, with healthcare holding the number one spot for the second year in a row.

To keep pace with the growth in managed services, 71 percent of MSPs plan to hire more employees in the next 12 months. While marketing and sales remain the top challenges, the data shows that MSPs are becoming savvier about this aspect of their business.

Security concerns also remain a top priority for MSPs and their clients. Ransomware and cybersecurity have almost doubled as a pain point, from 14 percent in 2017 to 30 percent in 2019.

“It’s a positively charged environment,” said Rob Rae, vice president of business development at Datto. ”Almost half of surveyed partners have been working in the industry for more than 15 years and nearly 100 percent of them said that right now is the best time to be in their industry.”

Datto’s third annual State of the MSP Report is based on a survey of more than 1,600 MSP partners around the globe.

Channel Impact^®
SMBs frequently struggle with information technology in this era of security threats exacerbated by an apparent shortage in skilled IT talent. MSPs, and other members of the indirect sales channel have a very solid opportunity to build customer loyalty and account stickiness by faithfully representing the best interests of their customers.

Tech Data and Deep Instinct Partner to Prevent Cyberattacks

Tech Data has forged a distribution alliance with Deep Instinct, a New York-based company that has developed a deep learning cybersecurity platform that provides enhanced protection by accurately predicting harmful known and unknown cyberattacks, and then terminating execution. Through this partnership, Tech Data will offer Deep Instinct’s product line to customers in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

“We believe artificial intelligence (AI)-based deep learning tools are the next wave in advanced cyber protection,” said Alex Ryals, vice president of security solutions, Americas, at Tech Data. “Because these tools are autonomous and constantly learning, not only do they require fewer updates — but, unlike typical machine learning tools, they also require no additional human intervention and feature engineering, which helps lower support and management costs.”

Deep learning methods are based on the layers used in artificial neural networks and are modeled after how the human brain learns. The deep-learning-based model is also promised to achieve a much higher detection rate and lower false positive rate for new files.

“Deep Instinct prevents cyber threats that others can’t find, and our deep-learning-based solutions are the only way security teams can prepare for both known and unknown cyber threats,” said Deep Instinct CEO Guy Caspi. “As we embark on new routes to our market through this partnership, we trust Tech Data’s knowledge and ability to expand the reach of our offerings to security teams across the globe.”

Deep Instinct works with currently deployed products, and is self-contained on endpoints so that it doesn’t need a network connection or human intervention. The solution also comes with a dashboard that allows technical teams to review and manage forensic events that have been prevented.

Channel Impact^®
Customers are constantly in need of cutting-edge security solutions to protect their data and by extension, protect the viability of their company. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence towards such an objective seems like a natural extension.

Veeam Launches Technology Alliance Initiative

Veeam Software has unveiled a new initiative to deliver expanded options for customers preferring unified solutions involving multiple allied vendors, particularly in the areas of storage and HCI infrastructure hardware and management stacks.

Veeam APIs enable the company’s partner ecosystem to build complete solutions that are powered by the Veeam Availability Platform, with some partners integrating both primary and secondary storage with Veeam’s data-management stack. The new program builds on this strategy by providing broader and deeper integration points.

“Our strategy has always been to be open and agnostic by working with a broad ecosystem of partners to better serve our mutual customers’ needs.” said Ratmir Timashev, EVP of sales and marketing at Veeam. “With the announcement of our ‘with Veeam’ program, we are taking that strategy to new heights to help organizations achieve the levels of data protection, data retention, data availability and data management that their business’s demand. Nutanix announced Nutanix Mine with Veeam a couple of weeks ago, and ExaGrid announced ExaGrid Backup with Veeam in April. This is an easy way for partners to build a unified offering with Veeam and we expect to see additional solutions announced in the future.”

Unified solutions will likely include options for scale-up and scale-out, and right-sized compute/storage that aligns with retention, recovery, availability and SLA expectations.

Some solutions will be sold and serviced directly from an infrastructure partner while various distribution and/or global system integrators will source others.

Channel Impact^®
Combining the technologies of compatible companies in ways that build value for the end user customer is often a solid strategy for market expansion and customer satisfaction.