Asigra, Inc., a leading cloud backup, recovery and restore software provider since 1986, released the results of an Asigra-driven global survey of more than 125 Managed Service Providers of all sizes, revealing that cloud backup services lead to increased business revenue opportunities and customer retention. Respondents also cited compliance-driven verticals, such as healthcare and financial services, as offering significant market opportunities for MSPs to grow their services. The patent-pending Asigra Recovery License Model supports the MSP profitability opportunity to maximize revenue, serve as trusted advisors and retain existing customers.

Survey Response Highlights

• 89 percent of MSPs offering cloud backup services are profitable, and 87 percent expect growth to continue
• Healthcare and financial services are top growth markets for cloud backup services
• 67 percent of profitable MSPs are offering cloud backup as a bundled service
• 50 percent of MSPs are recovering less than five percent of customer data in a typical year, and 75 percent are recovering less than 10 percent

Asigra’s survey revealed that 89 percent of MSP respondents who are offering cloud backup services today are profitable, while 87 percent of those profitable MSPs expect profit margins to grow in 2017. As the cloud backup market continues to expand, even MSPs who are not currently offering cloud backup services have plans to do so within the next 12 months. In terms of the vertical markets most commonly served by cloud backup services, financial services, professional services, healthcare and medical, and legal markets topped the survey. Survey data reinforces the importance of comprehensive backup solutions for industry verticals with compliance requirements such as HIPAA. To see more results from the survey, see Asigra’s infographic.

“Ensuring profitability for our MSP partners is a key aspect of our Asigra hybrid partner program. This survey re-affirms that cloud backup services offer an excellent path for MSPs to increase revenue from existing and new customers, and become trusted advisors by reliably managing customer’s vital business data no matter where it resides,” said Eran Farajun, executive vice president, Asigra. “Leveraging Asigra Cloud Backup enables MSPs to seize opportunities in a myriad of vertical markets and position their cloud backup services as a revenue driver to expand their total addressable market and grow monthly recurring revenue.”

The survey also revealed that the majority of MSPs who offer cloud backup services today are marketing this offering as a trailing complementary service. This go-to-market strategy positions cloud backup services as a component of an overall portfolio, enabling MSPs to bundle these services for free or low cost, increasing customer retention and wallet share with existing customers. One area not being fully utilized, as evidenced in the survey data: Few MSPs perform regularly scheduled recovery drills for customers. Only about half of the surveyed MSPs are performing them at all, and of those, fewer than three percent of customers are consistently performing scheduled drills. MSPs may wish to re-evaluate this aspect of their cloud backup service offering to protect customer data, realize additional revenue and cross-sell other services.

This survey data is consistent with Asigra’s previous research; customers simply aren’t recovering vast portions of data. 50 percent of MSPs are recovering less than five percent of customer data in a typical year, and 75 percent are recovering less than 10 percent. Asigra’s Recovery License Model allows MSPs to customize cloud backup services based on the percentage of data recovered to maximize revenue opportunities and increase customer trust.