At a recent AMA, was asked what excites me most about Managed Services (MSPs) delivering Data Protection. I said there are three categories, each with disruptive innovation:
- Comprehensive IT that interlaces modern backup/DR/cyber with IT management, powered by folks like Acronis, Kaseya, N-Able, and Connectwise
- Bleeding edge Cyber Resilience (along with identity and AI) delivered through MSPs, via Cohesity, Rubrik, Commvault, Druva, Dell, Veeam, and others
- The handful of providers blending those other offerings with their own IP to deliver outcomes far beyond backup; why they do it, and why most MSPs shouldn’t.
There isn’t a single best scenario or vendor; what matters is zeroing in on what the customer needs, not only in resilience but in overall IT agility. This is fueled not just by DPM’s research, but numerous IT buyer and MSP supplier conversations around BaaS, DRaaS, and CRaaS. Exciting times for sure!
video transcript
When 502 resilience leaders were asked what kinds of third-party services they use, the number one answer was a backup service provider. And there’s a lot of innovation happening in how those services get delivered. But that doesn’t mean every MSP ought to go build its own tech stack to deliver them. I’d argue probably 90% really should be leveraging somebody else’s stack, whether that’s reselling it, co-branding it, or re-delivering it as their own service.
When I look at where that innovation is happening, there are three centers of gravity that excite me about where resilience service providers are headed for 2027.
First, the consolidated IT service stacks, where we see data protection interlaced with cybersecurity, IT management, and ticketing. Accelerate those cross-functional capabilities with an AI layer, and customers get significantly better outcomes. Meanwhile, the MSPs delivering those services get a consistent, scalable catalog that most could not have built on their own. MSPs are delivering these through Acronis, Kaseya, N-able, and ConnectWise, to name a few.
Second, some enterprise best-in-class cyber resilience vendors offer their stacks through service providers. This is data protection depth over breadth: bleeding-edge capabilities around AI governance and rollback, cyber recovery, expanded SaaS coverage, and protecting identity, often at agentic speeds. This is where you see Cohesity, Rubrik, Commvault, Druva, Dell, Veeam, and others with MSP-centric offerings.
The third center of gravity is the 10% that ought to run their own stacks, because their core offerings go way beyond just backup:
- They’re hosting multiple enterprise-grade backup/DR/cyber resilience stacks.
- They’re delivering production clouds as-a-service
- They’re building GPU farms for their customers’ AI factories.
- They’re running vSphere so their customers can afford to keep using it.
- They offer orchestrated clean rooms, so their customers are prepared for their worst day.
So, why should the other 90% of MSPs re-deliver one or more of these three stacks?
Because when I talk to MSP leaders, most of their engineering teams spend their manpower in one of three buckets:
- Tactical operational service delivery – onboarding, error handling, helping with restores, dealing with ‘backup’ so their customers don’t have to. Love this!
- Strategic consulting and value creation – resilience planning, auditing, tabletops, and incident response. That’s what separates a backup provider from a real DRaaS or CRaaS partner. Huge fan!
- Keeping the tech running – building appliances, patching servers, adding capacity, and all the other stuff that adds no value for the customer and no margin for the provider. Shrink that bucket, and their technicians, engineers, and architects can deliver more through the first two. (please)
There’s a lot of really cool stuff happening in the technologies that enable MSPs to deliver expertise, and therefore outcomes, as-a-service. The bottom line for MSPs isn’t which stacks are definitively better; that depends on what kind of business they want to build. What matters is freeing up their technical talent by leveraging others’ tech (whether that’s a platform vendor or an upstream provider), so MSPs can focus on delivering more value to their customers, while increasing retention and margin.
Leave your thoughts on the LinkedIn article.
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