Rapid changes in the MSP landscape make it challenging for many service providers to leverage the right message at the right time. It’s time to turn this trend around and help MSPs get ahead of the curve.
The 2021 MSP Benchmark Survey Report by Unitrends MSP takes a deep dive into the factors driving MSP growth, challenges, service offerings and revenue. The findings are from data collected from 1,000 MSP organizations (the respondents were owners and technicians) of various sizes, spread over 50 countries. The survey includes the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions.
MSP Business Trends
1. The three biggest MSP client challenges are remote workers, IT security and BCDR
Managing a remote workforce, IT security, and business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) are the biggest problems for MSP clients in 2021: 58% for remote workers, 57% for security and 42% for BCDR.
2. Customer acquisition is the primary challenge MSPs anticipate in 2021
About 43% of respondents said acquiring more customers is the primary challenge they anticipate facing in 2021. In addition, 19% cited dealing with advanced and sophisticated security threats as a top challenge while another 15% pointed towards shrinking IT budgets. In other words, MSPs have to find new customers while offering comprehensive but affordable services — indeed, a challenging task ahead.
3. Post-pandemic MSP growth opportunities lie in cybersecurity and remote workforce setups
Of the respondents surveyed, 37% and 20% respectively believe cybersecurity and remote workforce setups will present the biggest growth opportunities in 2021 as clients will gradually turn to MSPs for help with IT security.
4. MSP security services have shown the highest revenue growth
Security services revenue has gone up a whopping 65% in the past 12 months for most MSPs, followed by a 54% increase in revenue from cloud management services and 46% from BCDR services.
5. MSPs believe frequently adding new service offerings is important
About 91% of MSPs believe new service offerings are vital for their business. In addition, 63% of MSPs have added four or more new services to their list of offerings in the past two years.
MSP Cybersecurity Trends
6. MSP clients have experienced at least one cyberattack in the past 12 months
Among the respondents, 77% say that 10% to 20% of their clients have experienced at least one cyberattack in the past 12 months. With less secure environments, due to the sudden shift to remote work, MSP customers are looking for robust cybersecurity services.
7. MSP clients use four or more security solutions
Half of the clients of MSPs surveyed use four or more security solutions. It adds more complexity to the client’s network, making it difficult for technicians to manage a host of disparate solutions.
MSP Backup and Recovery Trends
8. About 75% of MSPs use hybrid backup methods
The primary method of backup used by most MSP businesses is a combination of local and cloud backup methods to back up their client data. Only 19% rely solely on cloud backup while a mere 5% use local backup only. A hybrid backup strategy makes sense since redundant backups to both local and cloud provide better protection.
9. Nearly 70% of MSPs provide SaaS backup
There has been a big jump in MSPs backing up their clients’ business-critical SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce. It is an opportunity to add a new service for the other 30% of MSPs not offering it today.
10. Less focus on disaster recovery testing
Fewer MSPs are testing disaster recovery (DR) programs weekly and monthly. Around 30% of MSPs are DR testing only annually now. Manual DR testing is cumbersome, discouraging MSPs to conduct DR testing for clients. The alternate is automated backup and recovery testing that can alleviate the pain of manual testing.
MSPs Positioned for Growth
Hopefully, these MSP industry statistics have given you a lot to consider and process. There are many different perspectives to consider and options to evaluate, but no matter what you’ve taken away from this post, we’re sure you’ll agree that MSPs have a great future if they make the right moves.
This guest blog is courtesy of Unitrends, a Kaseya company. Read more Kaseya guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of ChannelE2E’s sponsorship program.
