10 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK revolution has proved largely beneficial at least to MSPs’ bottom lines. According to a recent survey of hundreds of MSP partners by virtual machine backup provider Altaro, the movement toward WFH has led to increased revenues for 70 percent of respondents. Not that MSPs were surprised by this bump. In a similar survey last year, 76 percent of MSP respondents had predicted that remote working would be the biggest generator of revenue during the pandemic. Still, a full 87 percent of MSPs surveyed earlier this year saw increased Microsoft Office 365 business in 2020 due to demands of workers moving to dens, bedrooms and kitchen tables. The largest source of those increased revenues came from implementations, with 55 percent of MSP citing an increase in their implementation business for Microsoft Office 365, followed by support, named as a source of increase by 21 percent of MSPs. “Over the course of 2020, MSPs implemented more Microsoft 365 solutions than ever before,” said the study, “with clients flocking to collaboration tools like Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint (Cloud).” Of course, more implementations tend to lead to more work supporting those implementations, and in turn 67.1 percent of responding MSPs said they either agree or strongly agree that support volumes increased due to remote working, while 27.4 percent declared that the volume of requests hasn’t changed that much. Certainly, the need for email security increased as companies moved to WFH models, and the vast majority of MSPs surveyed jumped on the occasion to offer email security services to their clients, showed the study. Overall, 91 percent of repsonding MSPs said that they currently offer email security solutions, while about 60 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the move to WFH made it easier to upsell email security, compared to about 11 percent who disagreed or strongly disagreed with such a sentiment. Offering solutions for email security also was the most frequently quoted source for generating highly sought-after recurring revenues, followed by offering help with email inbox management and training. Email security solutions were used by two thirds of MSPs to generate recurring revenue, whereas around half of MSPs said they earned recurring revenue on email inbox management. What’s more, 84 percent of MSPs that utilized third-party email security solutions on top of Office 356 deployment also set up third-party backup solutions for their clients, “showing that the opportunities for cross-selling these two services is very high,” said Altaro researchers. Incidentally, in a separate survey of enterprise end users, Altaro found that those organizations that use third-party solutions reported the lowest rate of email security breaches in comparison to organizations only using security packages offered by Microsoft 365 – 82 percent of all respondents who use third-party email security solutions reported no breaches. Overall, MSPs enjoyed increased revenue opportunities from the availability of third-party tools to manage their clients’ Microsoft Office 365 deployments, such as Altaro’s Office 365 Backup for MSPs, showed the survey. Sixty percent of MSPs said remote working led to increased cross-selling of third-party apps to manage Microsoft 365. A full 85 percent of MSPs, meanwhile, use secondary tools to enhance clients’ 365 setup. Other bolt-on services MSPs should consider in order to support remote workers, said Altaro, include training services, process automation, setting up databases and help with specific tools, such as programming in Excel and project management in Planner. So, moving forward, which side will come out victorious in the workfrom-home wars? Most communications providers and IT executives believe the employees eventually will get their way. In a recent survey of IT departments within communications companies, for example, two thirds of respondents said they expect customers will continue to operate with employees working from home in some shape or form for the foreseeable future. The remaining third, showed the A10 Networks and Opinion Matters survey, believe the work environment will eventually snap back to how it was before COVID-19. Those seem like decent odds for MSP that so far have enjoyed a boost from servicing remote workforces. o e industries The increase in remote working made it easier for me to upsell other solutions, such as email security solutions. Source: Altaro; HornetSecurity Group; MSP survey Ran out of enterprise datacenter space/power Source: 451 Research; 9/20 Federal Agencies Using or Considering U ing an MSP Source: FedScoop; General Dynamics nmental itoring Gaming ns do ? 00 or more Srongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree 30% 10% 7% 17% 36% 39% 16% 18% 20% 48% 9% 14% 3.7% 1 2 3 4 5 7.4% 29.8% 34.5% 24.6% 16% 0bn $236.0bn 6% Average Rating: 3.7 Yes, currently using an MSP Planning to use an MSP in 2 years Planning to use an MSP in 5 years Considering, but undecided Not planning to use an MSP
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