Emerging Technologies That 30 MSPs See Providing Big Opportunities In 2022

We asked MSPs on this year’s Managed Service Provider 500 list to tell us what they see as the most important emerging technologies their clients are looking for – or don’t know they need, but will – in 2022. Here’s what some of them had to say.

Emerging Opportunities

Managed Service Providers are on the front lines of meeting their customers’ most immediate IT needs. That makes them best positioned to anticipate what emerging IT products and services clients will be asking for as 2022 progresses.

As part of the 2022 MSP 500 project, CRN asked managed service providers to tell us what emerging technologies they expect to be the “next big thing.” What leading-edge IT will businesses and organizations be asking for this year? And, perhaps even more important, what technologies and services do MSPs think customers will need this year – but just don’t know it yet?

Not surprisingly many, if not most, MSPs cited cybersecurity as a technology that’s currently most in-demand. The list of specific security services included Security Operations Center (SOC), SIEM, SASE, managed detection and response, extended detection and response, managed threat response, zero trust security, next-generation anti-virus protection, network access control and incident remediation.

But MSPs also foresee demand in abroad range of technologies and services this year including artificial intelligence and machine learning, next-generation UCaaS, cloud and hybrid computing platforms, VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), data management and data analytics, IoT, and business process automation and robotic processing automation, among others.

Here‘s a sampling of the responses that MSPs provided. Some have been edited for clarity.

Paragon Development Systems

Asif Naseem

President and CEO

We see risk mitigation and the adoption of zero trust strategies as being key opportunities to focus on in 2022. Ideas that have been reserved for enterprise organizations need to be adopted throughout the market as part of a mature security program.

PCG Systems

Dan Pace

Managing Partner

Zero Trust and other SOC [security operating center] products.

Intras Cloud Services

Kareem Merritt

Founder and CEO

We‘re betting that the changing workplace landscape will be more of a driver to new opportunities to our business than “emerging shiny new tech.” We think the collective “business” is really learning to adopt the technologies that already exist to support how their workforces want to work. That’ll mean rapid adoption and optimization of collaboration tools led by firms like Microsoft, Zoom, and others. Our investments are in securing these environments to a level that hasn‘t always been top of mind in years past by business leaders.

ZL Tech

Kon Leong

CEO

HR analytics on collaboration platforms and email analytics. Relational analytics, a subset of HR analyses, dives into this trove of unstructured, employee-created data to actively provide a window into your workforce. The accelerating arc of HR analytics extract insights into collaborative workflows, communications, and networking topologies in order to provide metrics on quality and quantity of activity. The other trend is the increased sensitivity surrounding privacy, which may conflict with these burgeoning analytics capabilities.

Quatrro Business Support Services

Dilowe Barker

Executive VP

We see the need for visibility and analysis leading to actionable insights as the largest areas of need in the market today. Business owners and leaders are inundated with data points coming at them from multiple, different sources, so what they really need is a way to bring all of the data together providing visibility into business operations. Consolidating this data into one central place while presenting to the organization insights and analysis making that data actionable (with suggestions on steps to take or best practices to implement) to support the attainment of their business outcomes. This area of need is the reason we have invested so heavily in our CIC and Xport platforms.

Velocity Network

Joel Deuterman

President and CEO

Managed SOC and security services. Providing vCIO [virtual CIO] consultation to clients looking to become compliant for insurance coverage (ransomware and account takeovers). Providing managed firewall services to ensure their network is protected.

Success Computer Consulting

Bruce Lach

President

Modern workplace: Hybrid work environments that use tools like Teams, Sharepoint and One Note will be the biggest opportunity. Cybersecurity: Increasing cyber insurance requirements will drive adoption.

Trianz

Sri Manchala

Chairman and CEO

With access to new technologies such as AI, blockchain, IoT, and RPA, traditional firms across industries will fast-track their digital transformation initiatives. These technologies will prove to be a game-changer in reimagining solutions to existing business challenges and creating exponential value for the customers and partners of the businesses. The platform economy is increasingly becoming a metaphor for mass value creation where businesses establish a digital ecosystem of customers, vendors and partners to build connections and exchange value. This shift requires reinventing business using of emerging technologies and design thinking for a digital business model and process innovation.

Envision Technology Advisors

Todd Knapp

Founder and CEO

Expansion of our security services will be our biggest opportunity for the year ahead. But beyond that we are targeting quantum computing as a big area of focus for our organization.

Cumulus Global

Allen Falcon

CEO

Enhanced file services and low code/no code business intelligence [and data] analytics.

Dataprise

Stephen Lewis

CEO

There are two technologies that appear to now have enough maturity and functionality to provide meaningful new, key functionality to lower the total cost of managed services. Specifically: 1. Zero trust and nano-segmentation have the potential to significantly improve the security posture for some clients‘ use cases. 2. Direct-to-cloud (DTC) has the potential to be a more affordable approach to customers and offers more robust BCDR [business continuity and disaster recovery] than non-DTC approaches. This will allow IT executives who have underinvested in BCDR (and in doing so created exposure for their organizations) to now deploy a complete BCDR approach.

nClouds

JT Giri

Co-Founder and CEO

Windows migration to AWS; site reliability engineering (SRE); managed Kubernetes; AWS cost optimization.

Aspire Technology Partners

John Harris

President and CEO

Cybersecurity lodged on SASE, Zero Trust and managed detection and response (MDR) opportunities will continue to expand in 2022. Data applications and data protection and management will also thrive as organizations look for better ways to secure data. Operational IT for utility organizations is another area where we see potential growth.

Anexinet

Brian Glahn

CEO

Automation of customer and business process automation, infrastructure orchestration with event-driven automation, as well as infrastructure maintenance and security automation.

Nero Consulting

Anthony Oren

CEO

Both AI and machine learning technology will be the emerging technologies that will have the most profound effect on the work of security experts, helping streamline processes and crunch huge mountains of data to help protect businesses of all sizes.

PCH Technologies

Timothy Guim

President and CEO

Not a technology per se, but cyber liability insurance is driving the technologies that small to medium sized businesses are adopting, such as two factor authentication for email and remote access, managed detection and response software, and advanced email protection software. In order for clients to maintain coverage, insurance companies are requiring these technologies to be put in place, which is driving growth in these areas of cyber.

Invenio IT

Dale Shulmistra

President

Cloud computing continues to transform the IT landscape as many of our customers transition to Azure/AWS workloads for both server and desktop. On-premises VDI/VSI leveraging hyper-converged infrastructure is also very hot right now as the technology moves down-market and becomes more affordable and accessible to the commercial and SMB spaces. Hybrid work solutions continue to also evolve as the global workforce settles into a particular work mode. Having the right solutions for both remote and in-office workers is a huge opportunity. This includes collaboration solutions, cloud contact center, cloud security and VDI.

Pythian Services

Keith Angell

CEO

Pythian sees a few areas of opportunity in 2022: DataOps and MLOps that fit as an extension to our Enterprise Data Platform and related Quickstart offerings, as well as our FinOps/Cloud Cost Optimizations/InfrOps offerings, as clients look to gain as much value as possible from their cloud spend.

ComportSecure

Jack Margossian

CEO

We are exploring opportunities within robotic process automation (RPA) that we believe could have really interesting benefits for our clients.

Syntax

Christian Primeau

CEO

We see business analytics, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), security, and Internet of Things (IoT) as some trending areas of expertise that will continue to drive opportunities in 2022. In these ever-changing times, IT needs to listen and get closer to the customer to understand their needs and react more quickly. To accomplish this challenging task, it‘s essential to bring the data closer to the customer. By investing time and knowledge in these core focus areas mentioned above, IT teams will strengthen relationships and trust with their customers.

nClouds

JT Giri

Co-Founder and CEO

Windows migration to AWS; site reliability engineering (SRE); managed Kubernetes; AWS cost optimization.

AllCloud

Eran Gil

CEO

The incorporation of data and analytics as the connective tissue between all of our strategic partners, specifically AWS, Salesforce and Snowflake.

Interlaced.io

Justin Wells

CEO

Everybody is going to answer “security” [and] that is probably true. We believe that a more granular view of devices and orchestration is coming. MDM [mobile device management] for devices, coupled with more secure forms of device management and less intrusive metric and resource reporting are swiftly edging out traditional RMM.

Heiden Technology Solutions

Carl Heiden

CEO and CIO

Private cloud hosting. We have a number of clients who want the benefits of hosting but do not feel comfortable doing it with a larger hosting provider. They like to know where their data is.

B&L PC Solutions

Brian Bratchie

President

IoT, 5G usage [and] 3d printing to name a few.

Deft

Jordan Lowe

Co-Founder and CEO

AI and ML. Business process automation. Cloud monitoring [and] optimization suites.

SoftwareOne

Ashley Gaare

President, North America

Digital Workplace for remote/hybrid workforce, and cloud-centric application development and modernization along with data modernization for cloud.

Stratix Corp.

Louis Alterman

President and CEO

The emerging technologies we see bringing the biggest opportunity going into 2022 is 5G and unified endpoint management (UEM).

Powerland Computers

Ashley Penner

CEO

Containerization-as-a-service, AI-as-a-service, cyber security-as-a-service, and any major platform as-a-service, where possible.

Acuative

Vince Sciarra

CEO

SASE will be key with security becoming a major issue both in data centers, head offices and remote locations.