Understanding the Security and Data Backup Market for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

Acronis has released results of a new survey conducted by Omdia (formerly Ovum), which shows that the most requested service that customers want from managed service providers (MSPs) is security.

In the research report, an Acronis-supported survey was conducted involving 263 that serve small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). 

Analyzing the results, MSPs showed an overwhelming demand for reliable security offerings: 97% of respondents indicated the importance of ensuring minimal data loss or corruption in the event of an attack, and 88% report needing to be able to rapidly mitigate damage for discovered cyberthreats.

In addition, 89% of respondents expressed the need to offer a service that goes beyond anti-virus, anti-ransomware, and firewalls. Acronis Chief Cyber Officer Gaidar Magdanurov comments that the findings are in line with the feedback the company has received in the last few years. “Service providers are looking to earn higher profit, avoid customer churn, and improve the ease of use of their technology stacks for their teams. In the survey, 84% of respondents confirmed that it is difficult to work with multiple vendors and suppliers for each aspect of the security stack. Instead of using multiple tools for backup, anti-virus, anti-malware, vulnerability assessments, URL filtering, patch management, etc., a single, integrated cyber protection solution would greatly improve their ability to efficiently provide better services to their clients. This is why we see rapid adoption of Acronis Cyber Protect by service providers from all over the world.”

Summary

• The needs of MSPs vary by the size and scope of their operations, with pricing being particularly sensitive. Those working globally rate this more than twice as much of a problem as those with operations in country only.
• Minimizing data loss is the clear top security capability, but this varies significantly by MSP size.  Zero downtime is the fastest growing security capability.
• Automation and ransomware protection are most important backup capabilities. These indicate customers are looking more broadly at where threats are coming from and how to mitigate them quickly.
• Security as a service is what customer want from MSPs, MSPs want to have everything under their own control, so any supplier to MSPs must be able to deliver:
  • Rapid identification of incidents.
  • Automation to overcome the lack of skills.
• The biggest vendor in the target market is McAfee –in terms of both perception and actual presence, followed by Symantec/Broadcom.

Download the report to discover more.