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Welcome to the MSP Radio newsletter, catching you up on some stories you might have missed! Each week we'll pull a few stories from the podcasts, give you highlights and insights, and make it easy for you to catch up on the latest news and commentary.
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Just released: An Interview with Louisiana Secretary of State
On Monday, March 9th's episode: An interview with Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, who previously criticized MSPs for under delivering on security. The Secretary discusses his experiences with Managed Services Providers, his thoughts on the way they engage and communicate with their customers, their obligations on service delivery, and the legislation he is introducing to require registration in the state as an MSP or an MSSP.
Grab the podcast on your favorite podcatcher and hear the full interview, with links on www.mspradio.com
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Focus on real issues with security, not FUD
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Asigra, cloud backup provider, published a press release titled “Asigra Warns that RMM Platforms with Integrated Backup Will be Ongoing Attack Vector for Ransomware in 2020.” They are spreading FUD.
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Thoma Bravo Takes Sophos Private
From Monday, March 2nd's episode: Thoma Bravo has completed it’s acquisition of Sophos, removing the firm from the London Stock Exchange.
Why do we care?
That’s it – that’s the news. As I keep saying, nothing different today than yesterday, except some investors moved some money around, and hopefully some people made some money here. On an individual level, that’s the point of all the effort.
Except, there is something here besides that. Thoma Bravo is an investor in Barracuda, ConnectWise, SonicWall, and Solarwinds. They are one of four major investors in the IT services space, which also lists Insight Partners, Summit Partners, and Vista Equity Partners.
Insight has Kaseya, Veeam, Acronis and Cherwell, Summit has JAMF and Continuum, Vista has Datto and LogicMonitor. So four investors have significant portion of the IT services space.
And as the market is now less emerging and more maturing, these investor companies are looking to maximize their profits.
Here’s the quote from the Sophos CEO: “With Thoma Bravo as a partner, we believe we can accelerate our progress and get to the future even faster, with dramatic benefits for our customers, our partners and our company as a whole.”
Because, that’s what they always say. What I’m looking for is proof. For many of the companies that have been invested, they have not accelerated progress nor delivered new solutions. Over the past five years with all this investor money… where are my dramatic benefits?
As an observer, I believe less has been created in the past few years since the investors poured money into the space, not more. Less is being spent on the core technologies, and with those core technologies being now the focal point for criminals to attack service providers, this is starting to feel like a space that can be disrupted.
Sure, these investors clearly like the space because they have put money into it. But is their presence actually creating value? Has it really accelerated any progress… bringing dramatic benefits?
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Which companies do Americans trust the most?
From Tuesday, March 3rd's episode: The Verge has conducted another of their tech surveys, gauging the feelings of Americans around big tech companies.
This year’s survey yields the following results:
- 56 percent said the government should break up tech companies if they control too much of the economy
- 72 percent said that Facebook has too much power
- 51 percent said Google and YouTube should be split into separate companies
- Americans believe that Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and YouTube have an overall positive effect on society.
- They’re more likely to think that Twitter, Slack, Instagram, and Facebook have an overall negative effect.
Microsoft leads big tech companies in the number of Americans who say they trust it, at 75 percent of survey respondents. Amazon is close behind, at 73 percent. Pulling up the rear is Facebook: just 41 percent of Americans say they trust the company to safeguard their personal information.
Why do we care?
For many, technology is viewed as these companies, and the growing negative sentiment should not be ignored. This impacts any company who deals in technology, and this is the data point to show that getting continuing.
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