75% of MSPs show profitability with backup, but issues remain

The survey reveals:

Almost 75% of managed services providers (MSPs) said that their backup services are profitable, but more work remains. Those MSPs that are not turning a profit on backup need to review their prices or control the costs of service delivery; moving to cloud-first data protection is one way to approach this.

57% of survey participants agreed that their backup retention policies were constrained by local storage capacity. The wrong policies have the potential to make costs higher than expected or break service level agreements.

Nearly half, or 45%, agreed with the idea that backup appliances (including tiering to the cloud) are an expensive approach to data protection, and no longer desirable. Reliance on local physical storage media means a heavy lift for managing and maintaining, vs. cloud-first data protection, which eliminates the need for storage management, upgrades, patching, and other infrastructure-related tasks.

While many data protection products send backups to remote cloud storage as a secondary or optional step, cloud-first backup, like that offered by N-able, delivers a more efficient architecture that is better suited for today’s professional IT requirements. N-able’s cloud-first data protection approach means faster more frequent backups and up to five times less storage consumption for the same number of restore points. Time and complexity are reduced, meaning IT staff can entrust backup management to more junior staff, freeing senior staff for more complex projects.

In addition, cloud-first data protection helps customers recover from ransomware attacks without costs spiraling out of control.

“Every business has its own needs, but given the prevalence of ransomware that can attack backup files on the local network, cloud storage should be the default for data protection, and local storage a secondary option,” said Eric Harless, N-able backup head nerd. “Ransomware threats show just how important it is to store backups off the local network, which is why an appliance-free, direct-to-cloud approach is the best approach.”

The survey highlights the importance of helping businesses understand the critical nature of data protection and shifting the conversation to one of business risk versus a check-box exercise. 

“Backup is one of the most important things an MSP does for its customers—it can be the difference between a business surviving or not in the face of disaster,” said Leigh Johnson, Head of IT and Compliance, A&O IT Group. “Those that are not making a profit need to control costs, set prices that are fair, and educate their customers on the value of backup.”