2015 Technology Predictions: An MSP Perspective

Somehow it got to be the week December 15, which seems crazy to me because wasn’t it just last week that I was already breaking my week-old New Year’s resolutions? But end of year means that it’s time for predictions about 2015. What events and trends will rock the managed services world in 2015? Here’s this humble blogger’s take.

1. APIs, integration and app marketplaces

MSP platform companies such as ConnectWise have begun pursuing third-party development as a way to extend their platforms. Why do all the R&D yourself when your customers, ISVs and/or other vendors can integrate and add on? It’s like the Apple’s app store, but for business applications that plug into your MSP platform.

For 2015 we’ll see many more add-ons and sharing. Just look at LabTechGeek, an independent community of developers writing to that RMM platform. And that’s just one example. Watch for this to explode with activity.

2. IaaS prices will continue to drop

This is great news for service providers born in the cloud, or existing service providers hosting some services in the cloud.  Costs go down but you can (or should) still charge the same for your value-added services.

How low can these prices go? Unclear. IaaS providers will always need to recover the costs of capital investment (equipment purchases) and operations (power, cooling, etc.). But these companies are always looking to cut their costs as well. Moore’s Law will dictate ever lower-priced computing, and companies such as Google, Amazon and others continue to explore alternative power sources.

Is this a price war? In some ways yes, and in some ways no. But you can think of it as the Moore’s Law of the cloud. Cloud hosting prices will go ever lower in the foreseeable future.

3. Hybrid management

And with all those cloud services comes the problem opportunity of managing and integrating multiple solutions. MSP platform companies have been adding hybrid management solutions to their offerings. MSPs must embrace the customer-facing position of providing support for it all. Are you ready?

4. iPads — so 3 years ago

I can remember a time a few years back when nearly all the IT service providers at CompTIA and IT Nation and a host of other events were using iPads. My tour of events this year has revealed that trend is over. I saw more Windows tablets WITH keyboards this year, but no where near as many iPads or other keyboard-free tablets. And also, people are just using their smartphones. In 2015, tablets will be relegated to secondary device status, behind a laptop (or laptop-like tablet) and smartphone.

5. Internet of Things (IoT)

Do I think there’s an IT solution providers play here? Not anything obvious or lucrative or easy, at least not in 2015. But momentum is growing on the consumer side, and that’s how many things really get brought into the business side these days, isn’t it? For instance, I have a Smart Things hub in my house, and a DropCam focused on my driveway, and an account at IFTTT so I can create “recipes” – i.e. have one of my web apps trigger another one of my web apps to do something. (Such as have the photo you sent of your MSPmentor 250 nominee to a Gmail account automatically dropped in a Dropbox file for easy editing…)  So while IoT isn’t here yet for IT service providers, it’s coming. A first likely use case? Reining in some of the security vulnerabilities caused by consumers like me using IoT tech.

Do these predictions line up with your thoughts on what 2015 will look like? Please let me know in the comments below what your predictions are.