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By Martin Vilaboy MSPs find natural fit in managed IoT A mong the group of what could be consid- ered “more mature” emerging technolo- gies – including artificial intelligence, drones, virtual reality, robotics and pos- sibly blockchain – the Internet of things (IoT) is the only one to have gained significant traction among managed service providers. According to a 2020 survey of MSPs by CompTIA, for instance, more than half of respondents (53 percent) reported to having a managed IoT service offering. That places IoT adoption among MSPs surprisingly close to a few “bread and butter” service offerings, such as managed networks services (59 percent) and help- desk/IT support (63 percent), and ahead of other more-established technology categories such as back-up/recovery (52 percent) and mobility man- agement (29 percent). What’s more, the majority of MSPs are excited about the revenue opportunity. More than half of MSPs surveyed said managed IoT represented a significant revenue opportunity today, while an- other 37 percent saw opportunities down the road a year or two. Only a small percentage, 8 percent, were still unsure about managed IoT delivering, showed CompTIA figures. Even more interesting, CompTIA researchers point out that adoption rates are “consistent across all company sizes: micro, small, medium and large.” EMERGENT Hot for IoT 8 CHANNEL VISION | July - August, 2020