Study: MSPs Fear a second Lockdown

IT Glue, a Vancouver, BC-based Kaseya company, has released its third annual Global MSP Benchmark Report indicating that nearly three-fourths of managed service providers responding to their survey fear a second lockdown related to the Coronavirus.

“The pandemic has created an unprecedented landscape for all businesses,” said Nadir Merchant, general manager of IT Glue. “Our initial Global MSP Benchmark survey in February provided an overview of sentiment among MSP professionals, but once the world changed almost overnight, MSPs needed data-driven guidance on how to adapt.”

IT Glue initially surveyed more than 1,500 MSP professionals in February about their technology stacks, headcounts, operations and more. After the global COVID-19 pandemic hit in mid-March, IT Glue followed up with a survey to MSP professionals in May 2020 to identify trends that emerged as a result, receiving over 500 responses. Though the May 2020 data found that a majority (74%) of MSPs are concerned about the impact of potentially a second quarantine in Fall 2020, both surveys revealed several existing opportunities for MSPs to drive value for customers as businesses reopen in the second half of the year.

According to the report, around half (51%) of MSPs saw monthly revenue decreases as a result of the coronavirus shutdown, and more than a quarter (29%) saw their accounts receivable increase, indicating more clients could not meet contractual deadlines to pay for services. Prior to the pandemic, the top concerns of MSPs were a lack of adequate time to complete work (54%) and an inability to find good technical employees (53%), followed closely by changing technologies (32%) and a lack of information sharing (27%).

However, less than 20% of respondents to the May follow-up survey marked these as top concerns following the start of the pandemic, replacing them instead with concerns for cybersecurity threats, customer churn, price pressure and a second lockdown. Concern for cybersecurity saw the greatest change, jumping from 27% in the February survey to more than 50% in May, likely fueled by an unparalleled increase in cyberattacks during the pandemic.

Channel Impact^®
While their business model focuses primarily on monthly recurring revenues as opposed to one-time CAPEX sales, MSPs can become vulnerable if customers find difficulty in paying their bills.