FOR MSPs, challenge and opportunity often go hand in hand. This has been particularly true throughout the pandemic, which forced SMBs to scramble to get into the cloud, set up home workers, and fend off mounting security threats. Despite those conditions, or more likely because of them, MSPs grew revenue in 2020: specifically, 65% from security services and 54% from cloud management, according to Kaseya‘s 2021 MSP Benchmark Survey. Indeed, even during the economic downturn, 91% of MSPs surveyed recognize the importance of adding new offerings to their business, with 39% adding four to five new services and 35% adding one to three.
MSP respondents expect their top business challenges in 2021 to be acquiring more customers (43%), dealing with advanced and sophisticated security threats (19%), shrinking IT budget and spending as a result of the pandemic (15%), and supporting remote work for staff and clients (7%).
For their SMB clients, MSPs anticipate managing a remote workforce to be the top issue (58%), followed by security (57%), and business continuity and disaster recovery (42%).
No surprise that security is top of mind, as 77% of MSPs report that their clients were hit with a cyberattack last year and a majority say clients are now looking for advice on how to protect themselves. Their clients are not alone, though—1 in 4 MSPs feel their business is less secure today.
Business continuity is also a no-surprise priority, as 2020 saw a rash of wildfires and violent weather. Though issues like that made on-premises backup difficult, 75% of MSPs use a combination of local and cloud backup for their data, with less than a quarter (19%) relying on cloud backup alone. And nearly 70% of MSPs are now backing up clients’ public cloud SaaS applications compared to only half in 2019.
Post-pandemic, respondents expect that remote cybersecurity, workforce management, cloud migration, and business continuity will continue to be top growth opportunities.
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