The Biggest Challenges MSPs Face In 2022
We asked MSPs on this year’s Managed Service Provider 500 list to tell us what they see as the biggest challenges their businesses face in 2022. Here’s what some of them had to say.
Challenging Times
While the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be finally receding, MSPs have entered 2022 facing a lot of challenges and uncertainties. The economy remains unsettled, inflation remains high and business customers are still working through just what their work environments will look like. And supply chain disruptions continue to make it difficult to source some IT hardware and products solution providers need for customer projects.
Finding and hiring qualified people for technical and sales jobs, never an easy task, remains a significant problem for MSPs right now, as is differentiation in an increasingly crowded, even commoditized market. And selling customers on the need for cybersecurity is both an opportunity and a challenge for MSPs.
We asked members of the 2022 CRN MSP 500 what they see as their biggest challenges this year. Here‘s a sampling of the responses that 30 MSPs provided. (Some responses have been edited for clarity.) Take a look at the complete MSP 500 list, as well as answers to other key questions.
ANM
Raminder Mann
CEO
The return, or not, to offices. Much of our MS business is in networking, so if clients don‘t return to the office in a meaningful way, they may perceive less value in our services.
enVista
Jim Barnes
CEO
One of the biggest challenges to our managed service business for 2022 is hiring enough labor to support the growth in business that we are seeing.
Additionally, we are seeing long product lead times, which is also going to be a challenge in the new year.
MNJ Technologies
Sue Kozak
Co-Founder and CEO
Our biggest challenge is helping industries make the jump to cloud-based technology. Making the change to a new data implementation can be intimidating for a lot of customers.
Cumulus Global
Allen Falcon
CEO
Differentiation in a market heading to commoditization
Fuse Networks
Travis Thom
CEO
While the pandemic continues, SMB‘s have become more reluctant to embrace change, which requires additional spending. This hesitation creates challenges around securing time to educate on the need for an MSP and how their current view of IT being a “cost center” can be reframed into viewing IT as an asset that drives revenue, profit, and efficiency gain.
JMARK
Thomas Douglas
CEO
[Competition from] companies that are entering the marketplace stating they can also provide managed services when that has not been their core business.
Supply chain issues have also hampered our ability to hit target technology refresh cycles and 2022 does not look like there will be much relief.
PCH Technologies
Timothy Guim
President and CEO
The biggest challenge that we face is to continue to find the right talent for the business when it comes to sales and marketing, administration, and technical resources. We have put so much effort into making PCH a great place to work, but finding the right talent can be difficult.
NetFabric IT Solutions
Rick Karn
CEO
Chip Shortages slowing technology progressions.
Novacoast
Paul Anderson
CEO
As the threat landscape expands with a remote workforce, customers need to focus on cybersecurity hygiene more than ever. How to maintain cybe security posture is as much a customer education process as it is a service we provide.
Access Technologies
Shane Sloan
CEO
Staying up to date with all of the emerging cloud services, which ones are here to stay and which are valuable to our customers.
Buchanan Technologies
James Buchanan
Founder and CEO
Resourcing. The job pool and expectations of the market have escalated in the past year. Employee loyalty has decreased while employee demand and flexibility have increased. This has an extreme result on customer service because customer expectations have remained steady or increased, creating an unbalanced mix.
ComportSecure
Jack Margossian
CEO
Hiring and retaining engineering talent continues to be challenging as the major technology vendors have been engaged in a hiring spree.
Dataprise
Stephen Lewis
CEO
The great resignation, aka “the big quit,” will drive a heighted need for automation and highly disciplined knowledge management and training, all to mitigate the likely sustained levels of above-average turnover which will likely continue in ‘22.
Integris
Rashaad Bajwa
CEO
The biggest challenge is staying ahead of the changing economic impacts like supply chain issues for technology due to COVID-19 and increased labor and hardware costs as a direct result of staffing shortages.
Emtec
Sunil Misra
President and CEO
With the current disruption in the job market, we see recruiting as our biggest challenge for 2022. We are hiring for a substantial number of new positions in support of client projects. Finding the right candidates for open technical roles to meet client demand will be key to our success.
GDT
Tom Ducatelli
CEO
Supply Chain. MSPs cannot set up and manage new technologies and enterprise environments if the OEMs are six months delayed in shipping the equipment.
GreenPages
Ron Dupler
CEO
OEM disintermediation (direct selling of services).
Infinite Computer Solutions
Sanjay Govil
Founder and Chairman
Pricing pressures from competition and geopolitical concerns around offshore outsourcing.
Intact Technology
Jesse White
CEO
Our biggest challenge is to deploy our managed services with brand new accounts. Our sales team is used to selling project-based consulting services and now we are training and enabling them to sell subscription-based managed services.
Connection
Timothy McGrath
President and CEO
Continuing to adapt our legacy managed offerings to be more cloud focused, especially now that we have Google Cloud Premier status and are a Microsoft Azure Expert MSP.
Pythian
Keith Angell
CEO
Market fragmentation and the adoption of new services for technologies like DataOps and MLOps, which are new to the market and not as well known.
Stratix Corporation
Louis Alterman
President and CEO
Demand for mobile devices and accessories is at an all-time high and the supply chain for the devices continues to be constrained. Our biggest driver of managed services is the number of underlying devices we have under management – currently over 3 million.
Quatrro Business Support Services
Dilowe Barker
Executive Vice President
As a global service provider we see the commoditization of managed services has led organizations to expand into more complex services in order to differentiate themselves. This expansion leads to resource allocation challenges. The cost of dedicated specialist resources can be cost prohibitive to most services organizations.
RSM US
Patrick Vance
COO
Continuing to adapt to our clients’ changing business environment. Staying “connected” with clients while staff are working remote[ly]. Maintaining high level of morale, work-life balance and avoiding conference call fatigue.
ADNET Technologies
Christopher Luise
CEO
Our biggest challenge is continuing to educate clients on security. We‘re focused on making sure that clients understand the security risks to their business and are implementing best practices and solutions to adequately defend against continually evolving threats.
American Digital Corp.
Norbert R. Wojcik Jr.
President
The biggest challenge to our business in 2022 will be sourcing of any hardware for upcoming projects. We have many projects ready to go and, like many other solution providers, are in need of some key equipment we need to support our clients‘ environment.
ClearCom IT Solutions
Rob Cleary
President and CEO
The biggest challenge we are facing in our managed service business is finding key team members that fit our culture while being skilled in the right areas.
CPI Solutions
Arnie Friedman
CEO
Cyber threats and attacks that are directed toward our clients, vendors and ourselves.
Daystar Computer Services
Keith Bamford
Co-Founder and CEO
Our biggest challenge is creating separation from other providers in an extremely crowded market. The confusion between break/fix, partially managed, MSP and MSSP can be problematic. Even within the strictly MSP space, it can be difficult to differentiate.
Maise Technology
Matthew Hutchings
Sr. Partner
Inflation is the biggest challenge as we strive to maintain stability of costs for customers.