MSP Update: What’s planned for Pax8 Beyond?

Each week, we bring you news, analysis and insights from the managed services space with MSSP Alert, in addition to our usual cybersecurity coverage. Through our partner brand ChannelE2E, our coverage includes topics such as artificial intelligence, MSP IT management tools, mergers and acquisitions in the MSSP and MSP market, and other business information and news.

This week we’re giving you a preview of Pax8 Beyond, the second annual event from the Colorado-based marketplace for MSPs. Senior editor Sharon Florentine will be on-site at the event to report on the big trends she’s seeing there, including AI and cybersecurity, of course, as well as all the latest news from Pax8 company.

This week we also take a look at how telecom service providers, whose traditional business models have been disrupted, are increasingly looking like managed service providers. As a result, they are adopting tools that are standard in the MSP market, including PSA. We also have news on an expanded free backup option for MSPs. Check it out below. Here’s our roundup of MSP news for this week.

Pax8 Beyond: What to expect in 2024

Ever since Jessica C. Davis returned from Pax8 Beyond 2023, she has been raving about the event on a non-stop basis. In her words, “I really think it’s one of the best channel events of the year.” So when she asked me if I wanted to attend this year, of course I said, “Yes!”

Last year, Pax8 Beyond attracted 86 sponsors and more than 1,100 partners — selling out the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. This year’s event is sold out again, which speaks to the great content and interest from analysts, vendors, channel partners and MSPs, not to mention those of us who write about these topics!

The agenda seems to focus on many of the big issues that resonate with the IT industry at large: diversity, equity and inclusion, AI, cybersecurity, and business growth. All of these issues are becoming increasingly important to MSPs, many of which are SMBs.

I’m particularly interested in the half day on Sunday dedicated to women in technology – I plan to attend the panel and happy hour. There will be several keynotes (of course from Pax8, Microsoft, SentinelOne, CrowdStrike and SuperOps.ai to name a few) and breakout sessions, and although I’m the opposite of a “morning person,” I can’t wait for Tuesday’s breakfast session on “Protecting Your MSP: Only Wrong Answers” with Matt Lee and a panel of cybersecurity experts. I’ll definitely be up early for that.

Read the whole story here.

Telecom operators adapt to the digital age as the PPE market gains momentum

There has been a lot of talk about convergence lately, especially in the context of cybersecurity. But telecommunications service providers (TSPs) and managed services providers (MSPs) are also converging, and that opens up huge opportunities for the channel, especially with regard to professional services automation (PSA). According to Grandview Research, the PSA software market will almost double in the next seven years. This growth raises important questions and will have a significant impact on the telecommunications and MSP industries.

Evan Rice, president and COO of Rev.IO – a billing software company specializing in improving the efficiency of MSPs, IoT and telcos – said traditional telecom service providers are changing rapidly as they enter broader markets and drive convergence with MSPs.

“Telcom companies have unique aspects that make them vulnerable to disruption from PSA,” Rice said. “First, they provide the core connectivity layer that the rest of the technology stack rests on. But second, telcos are experiencing a sort of ‘race to zero’ in terms of cost – Google Meet is free and Microsoft Teams is included in the productivity suite, for example. That squeezes the margins of those services and they need to replace that revenue stream. They don’t want to be left out, so they need to diversify. On the MSP side, they have a slightly different problem; they’re used to assembling services and delivering those, even with professional services, and that’s a natural consequence of what they do. They may have a PSA practice, but they don’t have the tools specifically for telco,” he explained.

Read the whole story here.

MSP360 doubles storage limits for free backup solution

Backup and IT management solutions provider MSP360 has introduced a significant upgrade to the free edition of its backup solution, the company announced today. Customers using MSP360 Free Backup can now store up to 500GB on select public cloud providers, which is double the previous limit of 250GB, CEO Brian Helwig told ChannelE2E. This move aims to increase privacy awareness among end users storing personal data and support startups in their early stages before moving on to the more advanced solutions in MSP360’s portfolio.

“We have a lot of IT lovers, break-fix shops, prosumers and the like, along with MSPs,” Helwig said. “And they don’t want to work with a big company, at least not in the beginning, but they still want to know that their stuff is secure. That’s our way of being there – we’re there from the beginning when MSPs start until they get up to 10,000 endpoints. We’ll continue to give back to the community as it grows and we grow with them,” Helwig said.

MSP360 has increased storage limits for several public cloud providers available in its free backup solution, including Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Storage, Helwig said. However, for customers using Amazon Web Services (AWS), the storage limit remains 5 TB and local backup limits remain unchanged. MSP360 Free Backup provides the basics, including file-based backup and object locking. MSP360 Free Backup is provided per computer with an annual subscription.

More advanced solutions in MSP360’s portfolio support options such as image-based backup, MS SQL and Exchange backup, and Hyper-V/VMware backup, the company says, but for many customers, the Free Backup option is sufficient as they grow. And that’s exactly how MSP360 wants it.

Read the whole story here.