Emerging Technologies MSPs See As The Biggest Opportunities In 2021

We asked MSPs on this year’s MSP 500 list to tell us which emerging technologies they think will provide the biggest opportunities in 2021. Here’s what some of them had to say.

Emerging Technology Opportunities

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and continued economic uncertainty, MSPs entered 2021 perhaps more unsure than in any previous year about where to focus their strategy and resources.

But in one way, 2021 will be no different than earlier years: There will be a number of hot emerging technologies that will be in high demand and will create new opportunities for MSPs to incorporate them into their product portfolios and service offerings.

As part of the 2021 MSP 500 project, CRN asked MSPs to describe what they see as the emerging technologies that they expect to provide the biggest opportunities this year.

Not surprisingly, given the fallout from the SolarWinds cybersecurity attack, security technology and services of all types were cited as a major opportunity. And with millions of workers continue to work from home, technologies like VDI and collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams were frequently cited. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud migration, high-performance computing and next-generation data analytics also made the list.

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

5S Technologies

Mike Shook

President

Hyperconverged infrastructure, VDI and app virtualization.

Apex Digital Solutions

Jason Lambiris

CEO

Apex Digital Solutions sees a lot of growth opportunity with cloud voice and the modern meeting experience. During 2020, Microsoft Teams adoption for remote work and meetings soared. However, many customers have yet to fully adopt Teams for calling or other advanced collaboration and application integration scenarios.

Security is another area with a uniquely high business opportunity. There are increased threats and continued saturation of point solutions, resulting in confusion and complexity and a lack of skill set for organizations to address their security needs in-house. By continuing to drive its managed security services, the MSP can address this gap hindering many organizations.

Atmosera

Jon Thomsen

CEO

Atmosera continues to see large opportunities within the data analytics, business intelligence and IoT space as well as within our InfoSec Services. The MSP continues to expand its involvement in IoT/data analytics via the Azure platform and the work the company did in 2019 and 2020 around its InfoSec practices has really paid off and it will be doubling down on that focus.

Additionally, Atmosera still sees a large opportunity within the application modernization movement to leverage public cloud, being able to modernize applications for true SaaS or PaaS functionality. The MSP is actively pursuing inorganic activities to augment and accelerate its leadership in this category of activity.

Cipher

Ed Boucas

Founder, CEO

In 2021 Cipher sees opportunities in better utilizing Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platforms to help with internal processes. The emerging field of AI, specifically neural networks and Bayesian networks is also an area the MSP will focus on to assist with cyberintelligence and log monitoring.

Connections for Business

David Bennett

President

Cloud remains the greatest opportunity. Everyone seems to tout security, but for all the talk, many clients don‘t want to pay the price, so it’s an expensive exercise to educate to sell. Cloud, however, especially after the pandemic, is going to explode even further than before.

Coreio

Rob Muroff

Owner, COO

Further traction on ServiceNow with expansion beyond the IT vertical into the business.

C Spire Business

Allen McIntosh

General Manager

Private LTE/5G, SD-WAN and VMWare on Azure.

eMazzanti Technologies

Jennifer Mazzanti

CEO

Dark web monitoring.

Ensono

Jeff VonDeylen

CEO

The emergence of new underlying services being created by the public cloud providers is enabling new styles of application architecture as well as optimizing a host of long-standing IT measures. MSPs have the opportunity to enhance the end-user experience related to adoption, use and optimization of these services through the MSP’s own service innovation.

Secondly, tools for managing the application development and deployment process continue to evolve, thereby enabling faster evolution of the application portfolio. This ongoing change in the development life cycle creates challenges for organizations related to process enablement, configuration control, monitoring, security and optimization.

Envision Technology Advisors

Todd Knapp

Founder, CEO

Envision sees digital transformation, specifically in the areas of analytics and automation, as its biggest areas of opportunity. The pandemic forced many businesses to rapidly pivot their operations, adopting new technologies and processes to support a newly distributed workforce model. The MSP looks forward to helping clients sort through these new challenges and continue their digital transformation journeys.

Envision also sees great potential for its data analytics and business Intelligence practice. The MSP is eager to help clients leverage the power of data analytics to make more informed decisions, better align their operations, and develop more persuasive business appeals.

Groupware Technology, a Trace3 Company

Mike Thompson

CEO

As a disruptive technology that is accelerating digital transformation and enhancing business outcomes for customers, Groupware Technology continues to see AI as a big opportunity in 2021. Cloud will also continue to be a focus in 2021.

It‘s estimated that around 90 percent of enterprises are now in cloud. Mass migration to this platform has been a big opportunity for the MSP to provide solutions to customers on their multi-cloud journey. Cloud adoption continues to accelerate with advances in containers and serverless technologies, giving the ability to accelerate development and drive competitive advantages.

The MSP also expects that the emergence of containers will be a big opportunity.

Happier IT

Lee Van Iderstine

CEO

Cybersecurity will still be at the forefront. Happier IT is seeing more people transition from on-premises servers to AzureAD /SharePoint/OneDrive, etc. The MSP also expects to see further refinement and tools in the remote working space as companies start to make it more permanent, especially [for] security, compliance and data loss prevention.

ImageQuest

Milton Bartley

Co-Founder, President, CEO

Cybersecurity will continue to be a hot-button topic with ImageQuest’s clients and prospects. The MSP is seeing (and pushing) the shift from prevention to detection. That doesn’t mean the company doesn‘t focus on prevention, but it means it is encouraging—or even forcing, in some cases—its clients to focus on managed detection and response (MDR).

ImageQuest sees tying risk appetite to ROI as a driver of its managed compliance and cybersecurity practice in 2021. The MSP has continued to hire security analysts and others with expertise in compliance and cybersecurity to beef up our consulting practice. The company delivers that compliance consulting as a subscription product, so it fits in nicely with its recurring revenue model.

IT by Design

Sunny Kaila

CEO

IT by Design anticipates growing engagement around several technologies driven by the ongoing need for remote workplace collaboration, management and security. As businesses’ [employees] continue to work from home, technologies such as virtual desktop, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and teleworker security will continue to be needed. Additionally, cloud migrations will continue, both in support of remote workforces but also to enhance collaboration and deliver on the efficiencies of digital transformation.

IT Service ArchiTechs

Bruce Rosen

Principal, CTO

Hyperconvergence, cloud offerings including Microsoft 365 and IOT.

IT Support LA

Yuri Aberfeld

CEO

Azure. Many small businesses shifted their mindset from cloud being a privilege to a necessity. IT Support LA’s biggest opportunity is to introduce an affordable cloud solution through Azure for customers that want and need to be able to work remotely and not be geographically dependent, even post-COVID.

Leadwave Technology Solutions

Mathieu Berube

President, CEO

Leadwave believes the IOB or Internet of Behaviors is going to be a major growth area in 2021. Data is coming in to monitor all sorts of behaviors for business. Data collected by companies’ cars, copiers, security systems, and handheld and computer devices can all be collected and processed. The MSP sees many vendors integrating with each other and many data points for Leadwave clients to process and review.

Location independence and any technology that supports this will continue to soar in 2021 (cloud). A workforce independent of any one location is the goal of many of the company’s clients. A distributed cloud and cybersecurity mesh, and all related technologies, will be key in achieving this location-independent success.

Mission Cloud Services

Simon Anderson

Founder, CEO

Data science, [data] engineering and machine learning on AWS.

Nerds Support

Scott Richman

Founder, CEO

Serverless computing seems to be a promising technology emerging in 2021. Serverless computing allows users to write and deploy code without having to worry about underlying infrastructure. It‘s also a way to enable more agile and innovative strategies that allow a faster response to change.

NetGain Technologies

Tim Burke

CEO

One major area of opportunity for the company and its clients is security service offerings. 2020 saw an increased interest from businesses of all sizes to critically assess their security, both internally and through the services they offered their own clients. NetGain’s security-themed webinars and blogs in 2020 caught the attention and interest of its clients and ushered in opportunities for new partnerships.

As the business grows, organically and inorganically, NetGain can provide more people with security tools to protect their organizations. Those unable to factor in increased security support in their strategic plan in 2020 will surely be making security a top priority for 2021.

PKA Technologies

Felise Katz

CEO

Security managed services, artificial intelligence/machine learning [and] high-performance computing. Management of structured and unstructured data. Single pane-of-glass administration from the edge to the data center and hybrid cloud solutions. Contact tracing technologies.

Thrive

Rob Stephenson

CEO

Thrive has completed its first full year on the ServiceNow platform. Heading into 2021, the company will be focused on customer enablement, automation, self-service and digital transformation centered on the company’s new platform through integration.

TRG (Technology Recovery Group)

Sean Kennedy

President

Because of the digital transformation “storm,” TRG is seeing an increased interest in mobile device management [and] unified endpoint management—the platforms/licenses themselves, as well as ancillary installation and ongoing management and consulting support. Organizations need better visibility and control into the mobile technology they are deploying into the field and into employees’ homes and personal lives.

Trianz

Sri Manchala

Chairman, CEO

Trianz expects the expansion of the following trends in 2021, with a large-scale adoption among enterprises:

Predictive analytics: Data-driven analytics will be central to the future of digitalization as the pace and scale of investments are expected to grow exponentially in data foundations, governance, data lakes and visualization.

Smarter Experience Management: Better experience management enables businesses to offer a better value proposition to their clients on their transformation journeys.

Emerging technologies such as deep learning neural networks, artificial intelligence and machine learning provide actionable insights on expectations of various stakeholders.

TrueIT

Zac Paulson

CEO

TrueIT sees a heavy emphasis on software in 2021 such as [Microsoft] Dynamics ERP and CRM. These are areas that technology providers have been able to avoid in the past, but companies like Salesforce, Zoom and Slack have forced Microsoft to lean on their partners more to work with their clients that traditionally have been MSP-/infrastructure-focused.