The Most Significant Factors Contributing To MSPs’ Outlook For 2022

We asked MSPs on this year’s Managed Service Provider 500 list to tell us what factors, including internal changes, IT developments, and industry and societal trends, are contributing to their outlook for 2022. Here’s what some of them had to say.

Decision Makers

Managed Service Providers entered 2022 with perhaps more uncertainty than in any previous year. And yet business plans had to be made, budgets created, and people hired for the year ahead. So MSPs had to develop some kind of outlook for the new year.

As part of the 2022 MSP 500 project, CRN asked MSPs what were the most significant factors they took into consideration as they made plans for 2022.

Some MSPs cited broad economic and market trends such as the COVID-19 pandemic, work-from-home/hybrid operating models, and supply chain disruptions. Others pointed to evolutions in IT including cloud adoption, hybrid computing and the rapidly changing cybersecurity threat scene.

Others cited internal moves they have made such as expanding their product and service offerings, acquisitions, geographical expansions, hiring tech and sales staff to meet growth projections or add expertise, and making organizational and operational changes to their business to support growth and become more efficient.

Here’s a sampling of the responses from 30 MSPs. Some have been edited for clarity. (Also check out the rundown of the most significant changes MSPs made to their business in 2021, the key emerging technologies MSPs see as providing big opportunities in 2022, and the fastest growing services they offer.

enVista

Jim Barnes

CEO

There are three significant factors contributing to our outlook for 2022. One is that clients are having difficulty finding experienced labor to manage infrastructure and applications. The second is the increasing complexity with technology and digital transformation. The last is the priority of managing cost.

ITsavvy

Mike Theriault

CEO

Continued movement to a work-from-home business environment and the technology and solutions needed to implement and manage it.

Cumulus Global

Allen Falcon

CEO

Renewed economic growth. SMB adoption of cloud beyond email and basic file services.

Pythian

Keith Angell

CEO

We are seeing recovery in spend[ing] and new technology adoption as organizations come out of Covid-19 and are seeing the need to continue to digitally transform and get more value from their data. Cost optimization is also a key trend and Pythian service offerings fit into both of these talk tracks.

IT1 Consulting

Bryan Clifton

Principal

Increased growth of sales and engineering teams. Expanding professional, lifecycle and managed services offers dedicated focus on expanding professional and managed services. Deeper OEM partner relationships and growth.

Rehmann

Randy Rupp

CEO

Changes to our business development team [and] inflation/wage pressure.

ComportSecure

Jack Margossian

CEO

We’ve made significant investments in engineering, tools, and training and retooling our salesforce. Those investments have been paying dividends in extremely strong growth in our cloud, managed services, and security businesses, and we expect that growth to continue for the foreseeable future. As our clients continue to perform their digital transformations, almost no workloads are being excluded from a cloud or hybrid cloud transition. The ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shortages in labor and supply chains continue to provide our managed and cloud services with a major growth advantage.

Buchanan Technologies

James Buchanan

Founder and CEO

We have made significant investments in both our marketing and delivery environments to increase our security offerings, our cloud and digital offerings, and our recurring services. We are much more visible to the customer than we were two years ago due to a solid focus on SEO initiatives, content creation and a partnership with Gartner. We have expanded legacy solutions to adapt to the current technology environments and we’ve established new solutions that are flexible in scope to accommodate different sizes of organizations. Lastly, we are focused on not only renewals and expansions in new business, but a substantial training focus has also been placed on the entire sales team so they are equipped to drive more meaningful conversations that help more clearly and swiftly define where we can bring the most value to existing and potential clients.

Deft

Jordan Lowe

Co-Founder and CEO

Cloud repatriation. Cloud optimization. Cloud onramps. Talent shortage [and] “The Great Resignation.” Increased need for/reliance on automation. Infrastructure and application modernization.

One Neck IT Solutions

Terry Swanson

President and CEO

Augmenting sales with business development resources to focus on hunting new customer logos aligned to strategic growth. Continued growth in recurring revenues in the mid-market including multi-cloud, strategy, IT managed services and professional services. Continued expansion of customer experience initiatives.

C Spire Business

Ashley Phillips

General Manager, Fiber and Business Markets

Supply chain issues will drive adoption of hosted services and organizations will continue to seek advanced networking solutions like SD-WAN and security services to protect their IP.

SouthTech Solutions

Nathan Bailey

CEO and COO

Strong Florida economy and client growth/expansion, additional security services, vertical focus/specialization, and geographic expansion (adding new clients in key verticals). Additional services related to compliance in IT for regulated industries like healthcare and manufacturing.

Ricoh IT Services

Carsten Bruhn

President and CEO

Lingering impact of COVID-19 pandemic and timing of companies returning to the workplace. Increased IT security awareness. Expansion of sales in both cloud and security solutions. Increased transformation of Ricoh’s overall focus to IT Services. Shortage of engineering labor force.

Stratix Corp.

Louis Alterman

President and CEO

Post-pandemic changes from supply chain impacts, to contactless point of sale and an overall drive for automation, the demand for mobile has dramatically increased with many industries moving from a mobile-first strategy to a mobile-only strategy. That’s further fueled by labor shortages that impede the ability of organizations to implement their mobile programs. Stratix’ expertise in enterprise mobile managed services has driven more organizations in our traditional industries of retail, transportation, manufacturing and restaurants to move away from insourcing and seek our assistance. Additionally, many of our customers that had placed projects on hold in 2020/2021 are now accelerating their rollouts. Finally, our expansion into education and healthcare vertical use cases are significant factors contributing to our 2022 outlook.

Accent Computer Solutions

Marty Kaufman

President

Our target clients have a more positive outlook on 2022 and feel the need to invest in IT and cyber security services.

Envision Technology Advisors

Todd Knapp

Founder and CEO

The continued need for organizations to embrace a hybrid workplace model and securely support their team across various locations. This opens up a slew of needs around how to best support this distributed team, how to secure their data and resources and how to allow everyone to work together effectively regardless of where they are located.

Expedient Technology Solutions

Marcus Thompson

CEO

Cyber threats for businesses of all sizes have guided our focus towards cyber first. We spent this year [2021] becoming completely certified in all things cyber: MSP Alliance CyberVerify, CompTIA CySA+ Team Badge, CMMC-AB. CRISC, HCISPP and Certified Ethical Hacker to name a few. This extreme effort and training sets us apart and will allow great opportunity for us to help area businesses.

Guardian Computer

Jean Prejean

President

There are market factors that have gone into our strategic business plan as opportunities for growth. Such as the shift to hybrid working models, GC has been working with clients since the early 2000s that have a distributed workforce. Therefore, the shift to hybrid or remote working models is a tailwind for us. Secondly, with the great resignation, MSPs (among other organizations) are having issues with employee retention, GC has great retention (less than 5 percent employee attrition) and will continue to develop and retain top talent.

More Power Computers

Christopher Leiker

President and CEO

Strong inroads into the local government sector combined with new opportunities with existing clients.

MotivIT

Tim Low

CEO

We anticipate a larger share of the IT and BPO [business process outsourcing] market due to the current everlasting pandemic conditions. Hence our strategic decision to proceed with the construction of our new Global Service Center (GSC) in the Philippines, a three-story building spanning over 4000 meters [of] built-up space and able to accommodate up to 500 employees.

Phantom TS

Henry Timm

President

The number of mergers and acquisitions in the market, the acceleration of digital transformation for all organizations, inflation, and staffing shortages within our target client base.

Connecting Point

Scott Warner

President and CEO

The SMB space is becoming increasingly reliant on effective utilization of technology and with the rapidly expanding needs around IT security and compliance we are seeing very solid and healthy growth as a business and project that growth for the next three-to-five years.

Sequenter

Roman Gruzdev

CEO

Marketing efforts have improved our web presence, continued client satisfaction and strategic relationships have increased the number of warm leads coming in, and a greater understanding of what our clients value has improved our sales process. Many companies have moved to a remote or hybrid workforce due to COVID which has resulted in increased willingness to outsource their IT needs as less of a need for internal onsite personnel exists, thus creating more opportunity for our industry.

SpliceNet

Jim Gast

President

Our podcasts, “No Law Firm Left Behind” and “the Reboot,” have proven to be incredible reputation drivers and put us in a position of authority in their respective verticals thereby allowing us to do less “selling” in engagements. We will also start a new podcast/livestream called “Manufacture IT,” obviously targeting manufacturers. Additionally, serving as a go-to Premier Nonprofit partner to Microsoft, using our proven processes will continue to enhance our standing in that industry.

Computer Resources of America

Chico Ramnarayan

President and CEO

One focus that we see as a significant factor is our risk and compliance service. There is demand from our existing clients, especially within the legal and financial [professions]. Their customers are requiring them to be compliant and have certain safety measures against cyberattacks and it is part of our mission to ensure they are protected against them and/or can recover from any data loss.

Top Gun Technology

Joel Owens

CEO

The effects of the pandemic are still being felt in the data center industry as costs rise and supply chain issues delay deals and deployments. To continue to support our global Fortune 500 clients, we’re opening more locations, service centers, and depots across the globe, doubling our sales and engineering teams.

ZAG Technical Services

Greg Gatzke

President and CEO

Internally, organic, brand-driven growth supported by go-to-market investments targeting key verticals. Externally, increasing requirement for SMBs to outsource all or part of their IT, and mid-market enterprises to outsource non-strategic parts of their IT.

Core BTS

Paul Lidsky

CEO

Digital transformation is not slowing down. From the disappearing edge to the hybrid workforce, business challenges continue to evolve. Organizations like Core BTS are prepared to assist organizations as they seek to modernize, manage, and optimize their technology to keep pace with the business and maintain a competitive edge. Core BTS was also named a Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Service Provider in 2021. The Azure Expert MSP distinction will help connect organizations to Core BTS for their most complex cloud projects and Azure managed services.

ISSQUARED

Bala Ramaiah

CEO

The pace at which technologies are changing is getting faster and it is increasingly difficult for companies to keep up with the skillsets needed and to retain talent – and an increasingly remote and mobile workforce. Supporting a workforce that could be anywhere and ensuring that systems and applications are available to allow them to do their day-to-day activities requires constant care and attention, from the workstation to infrastructure, to cloud-based solutions. We see this very dynamic macroeconomic situation persisting in 2022, further fueling demand for our managed services offering. Our expansion with a dedicated cyber center in Ohio will help meet this demand.

Helion Technologies

Erik Nachbahr

Founder and President

The rise in cybercrime, new consumer privacy legislation, and the rising cost of cyber insurance.