Maximising manpower for business customers

If you’ve spoken with one of your customers lately, you’ve likely heard the all too common difficulties they are having when it comes to managing IT resources. In particular, security teams that are lacking in staff and necessary skills, yet are expected to drive consistent results regardless. 

Over the past two years, this lack of internal IT skills among users has become the primary catalyst for manager service provider (MSP) demand.

When Barracuda surveyed 50 channel partners across Europe in 2019, we discovered that a majority (69%) cited customer skills shortage as the main driver for managed services uptake, compared to the leading factor in 2018, which was reduction of capital expenditure (capex) and other costs (61%).

Unfortunately, their circumstances aren’t likely to change any time soon. In the meantime, they’re crying out for help from partners like yourself to alleviate their challenges and help their security teams maintain a secure network.

With time and resources at an all-time low, the last thing user security teams should be losing time on is menial, repetitive tasks such as network management, security remediation and patch updates. Their time is precious and such tasks shouldn’t continue to weigh them down. 

Even if they were to suddenly have significantly more time on their hands, IT teams would still be held back by their limited numbers. Shortages in skills and finances prevent them from growing their team to be able to cover all the tasks before them, but they can address how they operate to ensure better output.