Acronis announced today the results of a new survey conducted by Omdia (formerly Ovum), which shows that the most requested service that customers want from managed service providers (MSPs) is security.

In the research report titled "Understanding the Security and Data Backup Market for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)," an Acronis-supported survey was conducted involving 263 MSPs in the U.K. and the U.S. that serve small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Acronis is making the full report available today. In conjunction with the release of the report, Acronis is also hosting a live webinar on June 11 to help MSPs better prepare for future challenges.

Analyzing the results, MSPs showed an overwhelming demand for reliable security offerings: 97% of respondents indicated the importance of ensuring minimal data loss or corruption in the event of an attack, and 88% report needing to be able to rapidly mitigate damage for discovered cyberthreats.

In addition, 89% of respondents expressed the need to offer a service that goes beyond anti-virus, anti-ransomware, and firewalls. Acronis Chief Cyber Officer Gaidar Magdanurov comments that the findings are in line with the feedback the company has received in the last few years. "Service providers are looking to earn higher profit, avoid customer churn, and improve the ease of use of their technology stacks for their teams. In the survey, 84% of respondents confirmed that it is difficult to work with multiple vendors and suppliers for each aspect of the security stack. Instead of using multiple tools for backup, anti-virus, anti-malware, vulnerability assessments, URL filtering, patch management, etc., a single, integrated cyber protection solution would greatly improve their ability to efficiently provide better services to their clients. This is why we see rapid adoption of Acronis Cyber Protect by service providers from all over the world."

One of Acronis' latest offerings is Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, which provides a unique integration of backup with full-stack next-generation security and management tools. A single integrated solution simplifies day-to-day operations for service providers, increases the productivity of their technicians, and delivers much higher security and reliability for end customers, avoiding downtime and data loss that could lead to customer churn.

'Keeping costs down' is a key concern for MSPs, according to the Omdia survey: 92% of respondents say acquiring the skills and expertise to deliver security services is a major business challenge because many available services are expensive and scarce.

"COVID-19 continues to have a relentless grip on the world, resulting in the most challenging business environment we've seen since last decade's Great Financial Crisis and the Great Depression of the 1930s," comments Roy Illsley, Distinguished Analyst at Omdia, and one of the lead authors of the report. "In these environments where organizations are facing a new threat that they are ill-prepared for, cybercriminals can only thrive. To combat this, MSPs and their clients must have the ability to implement the most appropriate solutions to deal with these increasingly sophisticated attacks."

"The challenge for MSPs is to understand the risk of continuing to use legacy solutions from multiple vendors to provide protection for their customers. The need for agile yet integrated solutions designed specifically for the MSP market is very high in these most challenging times."

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, like all of Acronis' solutions, is developed based on the Five Vectors of Cyber Protection- safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS). Cyber protection, which IDC calls a new IT discipline, addresses the need to combine data protection and cybersecurity, which have historically been treated as separate practices, to mitigate risk and meet the emerging challenges created by modern data use.

Michael Frisby, Managing Director of Vuzion in the U.K., notes, "Vuzion is committed to helping managed service providers build a sustainable and profitable business by offering them the best possible solutions. With Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, we have the opportunity to do just that. This integrated solution has a lot of potential and we are excited to learn more about how it can further benefit our customers."

The Omdia survey also shares other useful MSP-related insights. For example, it lists the top three areas MSPs feel are important with regards to backup and recovery: being able to automate the backup process, providing protection against ransomware, and backing up the most popular SaaS applications, such as Microsoft 365.

Learn more about the survey

Omdia's Illsey will review the full findings of the survey during Acronis' June 11 webinar, examining how MSPs described their ability to protect their clients today and how they are planning to address those needs in the future. Registration for the webinar is now open here.

Acronis is also making the full results of the survey available here.