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Infrascale Research Reveals Strong Connection Between SMBs and MSPs

Infrascale Backup and Disaster Recovery Released as Next-Generation DR Offering

Infrascale Research Reveals Strong Connection Between SMBs and MSPsNew research from Infrascale shows that the majority of SMBs and mid-market business executives (68 percent) believe working with a managed service provider (MSP) helps them stay ahead of their competition. The research from Infrascale also suggests that the primary reason that businesses choose to work with MSPs, chosen by 51 percent of respondents, is to save costs. The second most common reason survey respondents said they use an MSP is for increased security (46 percent).

Infrascale reports that the vast majority of respondents said it is extremely or very important to have a predictable IT budget right now (96 percent). In today’s environment, 51 percent of those surveyed view working with an MSP as more economical than hiring internal talent.

In terms of budgeting, the three areas of IT noted as incurring the most expense by SMB and mid-market company executives are information security (60 percent), data storage (48 percent), and data analytics/business intelligence (45 percent). The IT areas incurring the lowest expense in budgets are application licensing (24 percent), digital transformation (21 percent), and data center automation (21 percent).

In a media statement, Infrascale CEO Russell P. Reeder said, “We conducted this survey to better understand the dynamics of how business executives perceive and select MSPs, as well as how MSPs can provide the greatest value to their SMBs and mid-market customers. Based on the results, we recommend that MSPs continue to lead with solutions focused on security, data storage, and data analytics. Our successful MSP partners are enabling their businesses to be more secure and to always access and analyze their data. The lifeblood of any business is its data, so it makes sense that securing it, backing it up, and analyzing it is most important to businesses.”

According to Infrascale’s research, data protection (53 percent), data and analytics (48 percent), and cloud services (45 percent) are the top three services business executives said they use from their MSP. These services are filled by specific data protection services: backup and recovery (43 percent) and cybersecurity (41 percent).

In terms of the selection of MSPs by SMBs and mid-market companies, the list of services that MSPs must offer before they are considered almost identical, with data protection topping the list (52 percent), followed by data and analytics (48 percent), and cloud services (45 percent). However, 42 percent of those surveyed referenced technical support as the fourth most cited must-have, followed by backup and recovery (41 percent).

Additionally, almost all organizations surveyed (98 percent) are using a backup solution, and 94 percent of businesses use disaster recovery. In most instances, MSPs help deliver these tools. Eighty percent of organizations said they use an MSP for backup and disaster recovery.

Cloud migration is also popular, as 97 percent have deployed cloud-based infrastructure with a cloud service provider. Seventy-two percent of those surveyed use an MSP for cloud-based infrastructure. However, only 3 percent of business executives at SMBs and mid-market companies said their organizations work with entities besides MSPs for assistance with cloud-based infrastructure. In addition, 22 percent said they manage cloud-based infrastructure internally.

Reeder continued, adding, “SMBs and mid-market companies clearly have embraced MSPs to execute critical business capabilities such as cloud backup, disaster recovery, and cloud-based infrastructure. The adoption of cloud-based infrastructure signals that almost all companies are embracing digital transformation. Infrascale’s survey results show that nearly all respondents have moved some (64 percent) or all (31 percent) of their data to the cloud. The fact that 79 percent of the executives surveyed said that their companies have adopted software-as-a-service application technology such as Microsoft 365 or Salesforce is another example of ubiquitous cloud adoption.”

To learn more about Infrascale, click here.

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