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Welcome to the MSP Radio newsletter, catching you up on some stories you might have missed!
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Cisco Cybersecurity Data
From Tuesday, May 5th's episode: Cisco has released a SMB cybersecurity report. It’s notable that SMBs are defined as 250-499 employees, so take that perspective into mind as you consider these findings:
- SMBs face about the same level of public scrutiny as larger companies
- The downtime is roughly the same, with SMBs experiencing only slightly less
- Both SMBs and larger companies both expertise focused on cybersecurity, and these companies are both focused on keeping their infrastructure updated
- Both sizes show similar investments in patch management
Why do we care?
Let’s start by a nod to the unrealistic nature of calling SMB 250-499. Good one, Cisco. Never change.
I’d actually say this is more a mid-market to enterprise comparison, but that’s still useful. The challenges are real at all levels, but the perception they are handled differently is one that data doesn’t always stand up to.
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Making Ethics Pay in a World of Distrust & Big Tech
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There are business lessons to be learned by leveraging ethics in a business sense. How did big tech damage technology's trust? What can be done? What are strategies to deal with that?
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Salesforce moves on new features
From Monday, May 4th's episode: From reporting in Axios, Salesforce is announcing new products today to help businesses navigate reopening during a pandemic, tackling newly necessary tasks like scheduling office workers in shifts, managing employee health and handling emergency responses.
Some more specifics of those features:
- A Work.com command center dashboard where businesses can assess their readiness across locations, merging internal data, survey information and public data.
- A suite of emergency response management products designed for tasks including contact tracing. Built in collaboration with Accenture, the set of tools is aimed at public health institutions, government agencies and businesses.
- An employee wellness check system designed to let companies query and monitor the health of employees and visitors to make informed decisions on opening and closing offices, among other things.
- A shift-management system that helps business leaders figure out how to reduce density, schedule breaks and reduce other bottlenecks so employees can safely return to work.
These are new paid features to the products, with prices from $5 to $50 per user per month.
Why do we care?
Here they come… new products and features specifically focused on the reality of work to come. I’m expecting many more to come.
We can see what Salesforce is focused on – changes to work in shifts, employee wellness, contact tracing, and work location status.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t observe the consulting opportunity for Salesforce implementers, but this also gives insights in general.
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How has working itself changed?
From Wednesday, May 6th's episode: First, Canalys has released some new cloud spending figures for Q1 2020. Spending grew 34.5% year on year compared to the previous period, but the data also shows that the trend is slowing, as quarter on quarter growth was only 2.6%. The analyst firm attributes the growth to the sudden shift to remote working.
Remember, this is Q1 data, so the impact of COVID-19 will not be fully revealed until Q2.
Moving from backward looking data to forward opinion data, the 2112 group has new data on the channel. Between March and late April, channel chief confidence is down 5 points. Those same chief’s outlook is improving, up 10% from March but still down 57% from January.
63% of channel chiefs are maintaining or increasing their channel marketing budgets, and 71% maintaining or increasing their channel sales budgets. And, 72% expect significantly less business travel trough 2021.
Why do we care?
There is a difference between forward looking data and backward looking data, and I wanted to pause and highlight that. The Canalys data tells us what happened, and the 2112 group’s data is polling opinions to try and predict the future.
What does that mean here?
The Canalys data gives us a directional arrow – cloud services were going up and that arrow is less upward than it was. My analysis – thus, my opinion – is that the bump from working from home will continue into Q2 because of April, but I’m less convinced the speed will continue year-over-year. We’re certainly not done, but those huge gains will slow at some point, and that point is likely soon if not now.
Channel chiefs are a largely optimistic bunch, so I’m not surprised they are not dialing back as a majority. I’m also not sure they have actually seen the effects yet.
Let’s think that through – if end customers start cost cutting in late March, some of those won’t impact until April, meaning the solution providers see the impact in April or May, and so the vendors may not see it upstream until May or June, and that all assumes end customers moved right away, which may not be universally true. I think there is more of a lag to the impacts that aren’t necessarily going to be shown in actual data (versus this forward thinking opinion).
The PPP stimulus is eight weeks – so April and May. There could well be another wave of economic impact June 1. Still hoping for the best but planning for the worst from my vantage point.
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