SolarWinds Report Shows MSPs have Growth Opportunity in Advanced Security

SolarWinds, a North Carolina-based provider of IT management software, has released the findings of its annual “Trends in Managed Services” report, providing insight into potential growth opportunities for IT providers in North America and Europe. The research provides comparisons on revenue, profit, service selection, sales capacity, customer engagement, and growth potential.

“Our research has revealed that 97% of respondents offer some form of managed services—which is a clear demonstration of the managed services transformation remaking the technology channel. It’s safe to say the state of managed services is strong,” said John Pagliuca, president of SolarWinds MSP. “This latest research also underscored the major growth opportunities we’re already looking to help our MSPs leverage including automation, security, and operations.”

In North America, respondents were most comfortable offering and using antivirus (89%), firewalls (83%), data backup and recovery (81%), and endpoint security (75%). In Europe, respondents were most comfortable offering and using antivirus (93%), data backup and recovery (82%), firewalls (82%), and anti-spam (80%) as solutions.

However, MSPs have room for growth in some of the more advanced security solutions and offerings, as respondents were less confident in the more complex controls offerings. European and North American respondents selected the same top three solutions they were least comfortable with: biometrics, cloud access security brokers (CASBs), and digital rights management. On the services end, European respondents were least comfortable with penetration testing (52%), auditing and compliance management (39%), and risk assessments (36%). North American respondents were least comfortable with auditing and compliance management (53%), penetration testing (47%), and security system architecture (39%).

The results also showed MSPs are starting to increase the use of automation to handle day-to-day tasks such as patch management and backup, but don’t feel comfortable with automating the advanced tasks. Another key finding showed core business operations are still amongst the biggest growth obstacles for MSPs including lack of resources/time, sales, and marketing.

Channel Impact^®
The data provide the opportunity for MSPs to get increased visibility on where they stand in relation to their peers.