There has been a continued surge in overall growth for managed service providers (MSPs), especially for those offering security services, according to the results of Kaseya’s annual MSP Global Pricing Survey.
According to the findings, the majority of MSPs have experienced more than 20 percent growth over the past three years.
The survey findings, gathered from owners and operators of nearly 400 MSP firms spread across more than 30 countries, revealed that high-growth MSPs offer more emerging services than their lower-growth counterparts. These include cloud monitoring and hosting services for customer-owned equipment, and nearly all high-growth MSPs deliver a strong portfolio of services such as cloud services, backup and recovery, and desktop and server management.
“MSP customers are moving away from having their own hardware and are now just paying for what they need,” Miguel Lopez, senior vice president and general manager of Kaseya, told eWEEK. “The need changes, so they are able to scale up and down as the need fluctuates. These types of environments are either being provided or managed by the MSP.”
Lopez explained that, since so many software systems used by MSP customers require or provide an option for SaaS delivery, the quantity of servers needed by the customers has decreased, but the need for cloud assistance for these has increased, and services around the management of these systems as well as the vendors have increased.
More than half of the MSP respondents offer cloud services (infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, software as a service), and 75 percent of those report that their revenue had increased in 2015.
High-growth MSPs outpaced low-growth MSPs in offering cloud services by 58 percent to 48 percent, and 66 percent of those high-growth MSPs expect increased revenues in 2016.
“There appears to be an explosion on the security side, but I believe that is due to all the security breaches in the last year where the media has been providing regular updates to the general public,” Lopez said. “If anything, the fact that there is an increase of the traditional services is somewhat surprising. I would have thought they would have plateaued more this year.”
The survey also found that 85 percent of high-growth MSPs are more likely to provide hosting services for customer-owned equipment.
“We expect those MSPs that are growing and evolving to continue growing. The main drivers are the need to change due to so much competition, as well as the demand by customers for specialized services,” Lopez explained. “I do expect the growth to continue this year as MSPs continue to provide these specialized services—specifically cloud and security.”