Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

According to Gartner, enterprise usage of AIOps is set to surge from a mere 5% in 2018 to a whopping 30% in 2023. To survive in an increasingly competitive market, MSPs must not only respond well to customer expectations but anticipate them. Another Gartner report states that by 2025, over 80% of public cloud managed and professional services deals will require both hybrid and multi-cloud capabilities from the provider, up from below 50% in 2020.

Many small businesses start with an idea, a product or service, and a willing market. Many managed service providers have assembled their client list from friends, family, and business contacts allowing them to quickly build revenue flow with relatively little effort. But what happens when an MSP’s network of friends and associates dries up? Or they’re no longer able to build a new business based on referrals?

We’ve discussed this topic many times during our NinjaOne MSP Live Chats, and the fact is it’s an important question to consider regardless of your plans for exiting your business. Even if you’re not planning to sell your MSP, knowing the factors that play into your MSP’s valuation and understanding the metrics that owners and investors use to evaluate and optimize MSP businesses is key.

Over the past few years, we’ve been seeing large-scale consolidation taking place in our marketplace, with private equity firms and margin-based companies, such as telcos and traditional IT consulting businesses, investing heavily in MSPs.

In part one of this blog post series, we discussed several key reasons why your clients need backup and why either of you might be considering a change. In this second part, I will discuss how you might go about expanding or replacing your existing backup offerings.

For MSP’s and IT pros, IT documentation is a priceless tool used to record, organize, and store the information they need to do their job efficiently. With IT documentation software, users can start to build a solid foundation of organizational knowledge that contains essential and accessible information for a modern, secure IT environment. Due to its versatility, IT managers are continually looking to use this software in their everyday work.

The onboarding experience sets the tone for your entire relationship with new clients. This is a critical juncture when you can make your clients feel like they made the right decision by hiring you -- or just as easily make them question their decision. Like most processes, onboarding should be planned beforehand to ensure it runs smoothly. A structured approach leading to seamless onboarding will set the right tone and help foster a long-lasting relationship while reducing client churn.

Professional services automation, aka PSA, is a business software that helps businesses who provide managed services to clients. One such example of businesses that can benefit from PSA software are MSPs. The core function of PSA software is to enable businesses in the services industry to efficiently run their business. It provides organizations with the tools required to manage all the stakeholders engaged in the delivery of a project.

“I can’t get this website to load.” As common help requests go, this sort of ticket can cause any tech to roll their eyes in anticipation of wasting time on a wild goose chase. If example.com isn’t working for one of your users, it could be caused by any of a dozen or more points of failure—everything from the user making a simple typo to a major Internet outage.

Looking to build your basic IT knowledge in 2022? In this post we'll cover some general network monitoring and network management best practices that MSPs and IT departments use to support their organizations. Any discussion about IT is eventually going to lead towards network monitoring and management. All told, one of the most well-understood roles of an IT department or IT provider is that of keeping a business’ essential systems up and running.

Although it’s good to stay optimistic for 2022, it’s difficult to deny that the main challenges the world has been facing since the beginning of the pandemic are still among us. Cybersecurity continues to be one of the key global targets for criminals in a world where an ever-increasing percentage of the workforce is shifting to working from home (WFH), leaving organizations more vulnerable than ever to a wide array of threats.

As the world has shifted towards remote work in the wake of Covid-19, the need for remote management and monitoring tools has increased. Managed service providers (MSPs) use RMMs to provide off-site, automated and streamlined support to their clients for their IT needs. Having an efficient RMM can reduce workload and give MSPs a competitive edge over adversaries. So let’s take a more detailed look at what an RMM software can do and then a look at the best RMM software tools for MSPs in 2022.

One of the questions I regularly get asked is what common automation tools do I use or what do I advise people to use for various use cases? I thought I’d put this information into a blog for easy reference for our partners and others. Note: None of the recommendations below are commercial endorsements, but they are suggestions based on what I’ve used personally in the past. You are welcome to use whatever you want since most of the things below have other options, free or paid.

So, you’re thinking about replacing your current backup solution. Well, before you start requesting price quotes and comparing feature matrixes you should understand that a change can have both short-term and long-term impacts. The extent of the impact depends on several factors, including why your clients need backup, how those backups are being performed, whether they have ever experienced data loss, and how long they need to retain backup data.

The cloud has become a core component of Information Technology because of its flexibility, affordability, and ease of use. Software is run via cloud subscription models, reducing time to market and simplifying distribution. Entire offices have moved into the cloud, allowing teams of all sizes to collaborate and communicate remotely. Beneath it all, files and data are stored and shared in the cloud where it’s readily accessible across devices.

The public sector hasn’t always had a reputation for digital agility and modern hardware, but that’s beginning to change thanks to COVID-19. Forced to operate from home, public sector employees are employing a mix of devices and cloud strategies to keep city services running. However, these very same advances could be fueling shadow IT within public sector organizations and leaving them vulnerable to data leakage, theft, or attack.

I was asked to write a pledge to help promote the importance of Safer Internet Day, which is taking place February 8. If you are not familiar with Safer Internet Day, it is a day dedicated to highlighting practical ways in which you can be involved in creating and maintaining a better online world. You can read more about it here. I took on this task and actually came up with two pledges: a personal and business one.

There are a variety of ways to add accessible data storage to a home or business network, but not all equipment is created equal. Determining the best solution is challenging, especially for small businesses or home users who don’t necessarily need the features and capacities that large organizations require. Among the most common solutions to choose from are cloud, in-house servers, and network-attached storage (NAS).

Companies typically seek to create centralized systems to manage IT assets, including not only hardware, software, networks, and infrastructure, but also important data. Complete control over such a complex environment is often difficult -- if not impossible -- to achieve, but proper asset management protocols can help organizations edge closer to that goal. Asset management makes it easier to manage budgets, utilize analytics, protect data, and optimize the IT environment.

While MSPs have been making significant investments in security and offering services, it is a challenge to keep up with the frequency and evolving sophistication of today’s cybersecurity threats. Defense in Depth (DiD) is the foundation on which most MSPs have built a layered security approach for dealing with them.

In the digital age, organizations depend more on IT than ever before. The foundation of many IT functions -- including data storage, website hosting, emails, and software -- is server management. Without reliable, functioning servers, most IT functionality would collapse. Many businesses have migrated internal IT to cloud services using servers located in remote data centers, but a significant number still have in-house servers or use a hybrid environment of in-house and cloud services.

Feel like you're working through the same tickets and tasks over and over and over again? Breakout of your IT Groundhog Day time loop with the help of scripts and automation. Helpdesks and IT teams are inundated with repetitive, time-consuming, often low-value tasks that distract from larger strategic projects. With most IT leaders saying their staff is already stretched thin, this leaves little room for important projects that will lead to greater organizational productivity and efficiency.