A global survey of 1,884 MSPs conducted by Strategy Analytics on behalf of Datto finds half of MSPs reporting their clients now have 50% to 75% of workloads in the cloud. Another nearly 20% report clients have 25% to 50% of their workload running in the cloud.
The survey finds MSPs only saw a modest increase in revenue during the pandemic, while more than a third (36%) saw no change. Nearly 20% saw revenues decline. Many MSPs also saw costs rise, with more than a quarter (27%) increasing headcount.
Spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud infrastructure, including dedicated and shared environments, decreased 2.4% year over year in the second quarter of 2021 (2Q21) to $16.8 billion, according to International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment.
The decrease comes after six quarters of year-over-year growth, and most notably compares to the 39.1% annual growth seen by the market in 2Q20, when the world just entered the pandemic with the first wave of business and country closures causing a spike in investments in cloud services and infrastructure.
And I continue to track the sentiment on Big Tech. It’s down again, per a study from the Public Affairs Council and Morning Consult. 32% say its less trustworthy than other sectors. It used to tbe the top of the list on trust from 2012 to 17. It fell to fourth in 2018, fifth in 2019 and 2020, and now… sixth place.
Why do we care?
Let’s not kid ourselves about the damage to the reputation of technology. That should color any providers approach, because establishing trust is key.. and that much harder now.
Last week some data told us it’s nearly a majority using SaaS and cloud – this week’s data says about the same thing.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t observe that IT service companies are tying their fate to cloud providers in this shift. That doesn’t mean not to do it – it means focusing on communication, consulting, and advising style services both establishes trust and keeps some distance from the providers. Planning for failures and business continuity – including phones, as we talked about yesterday – builds on that approach.