TechAisle with technology adoption — 78% of small (1-99 employees) businesses and 97% of midmarket (100-999 employees) businesses consider technology to be “somewhat” or “very important” to their success, and 28% of small and 43% of midmarket firms report that they have become more dependent on technology over the past 12 months. 87% of SMBs are increasing their IT, security, and cloud services management to partners, including MSPs.
And this tidbit — MSPs are hardly the only source of managed services: more than 60% of VARs, Service Providerss, and System Integrators sell managed services today, but there has been no increase in managed services activity in all of these channels compared to 7 years ago.
Worldwide cloud infrastructure services spending increased 19% to US$66.4 billion in Q1 2023, according to analyst firm Canalys. Overall investment in the market slowed by 20%, despite the growth. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud collectively grew 22% (compared to 26% in Q4 2022) to account for a 64% share of customer spending in Q1 2023.
Why do we care?
Anurag’s analysis in the blog is very vendor focused, so if you’re a vendor, he has the insights for you. For providers, this data says two things. First, yes, your customers continue to need you, so feel good about that dependency on technology as your role is sticking around. Second was the insight about the lack of growth of managed services outside those specializing in it. My take – there’s often a self-importance of MSP as the only business model that matters in delivering IT services. Don’t believe the hype. It’s one way of many, and other mixes of service offerings can deliver healthy results too. Particularly with that growth in the cloud (which is still strong).