By Charles Weaver 

The MSPVerse™ My opinion and analysis of the week’s news and events in a succinct summary format. Feel free to comment.  

News, Events, and Analysis for the Week Ending February 11, 2022 

Becoming an MSSP 

First up is an interesting piece on “becoming an MSSP.” We have talked a lot about this type of theme, and it continues to circulate as a “legitimate” concept of sorts. In this article, the author does distinguish between MSPs and VARs, both groups pursuing the designation of MSSP.  

It is not a distinction with a meaning. Instead, the entire “become an MSSP” campaign is about MSPs being equipped with the necessary technology to deliver managed services offerings they should be delivering anyway. A good article worth a read.  

2022 Managed Services Economic Forecast 

One of our MSPZone podcasts this week featured an analysis of the 2022 managed services professional market. All things look rather good, considering rising inflation, continued scarcity of IT and security labor, and ongoing disruption to the global supply chain. MSPs are in an incredibly outstanding position for the year, provided they take steps to remain relevant! 

Post Pandemic Cloud  

Shane Zide, vice president of global sales and channel at Vultr joined the MSPZone podcast this week for a discussion of cloud computing options in the post pandemic world. There were some parts of the interview where I thought the impact of global supply chain shortages could be quite relevant to MSPs who frequently (or want to enter) work in co-location and hybrid cloud environments.  

Take a listen and come to your own conclusions.  

MSSPs and Cybersecurity Fuel M&A Activity in 2021 

According to SecurityWeek, more than 430 M&A deals last year were studied with a substantial number of them coming from the MSSP and cybersecurity sectors. This does not come as much surprise as many MSPs last year can attest to being hounded by M&A brokers and buyers. Despite a lot of the pressure coming from threatened increases to the capital gains rates here in the United States, the desire for investors to hedge against the stock markets and use private equity to diversity into managed services and cybersecurity continues to be a trend in 2022.