More Momentum For Managed Service Providers

A recent survey by IT staffing specialist TEKsystems said 43 percent of businesses will increase spending on managed, project-based and statement-of-work services in 2017, a substantial leap from 31 percent in the company's survey for 2016.

Jason Hayman, market research leader for TEKsystems, said corporate IT decision makers want MSPs that can specialize in cloud and security, as well as others where businesses can't find or hire someone internally to do that work.

"We see ourselves becoming stronger in the MSP arena," said Kevin Goodman of BlueBridge Networks, citing more work around cloud and security. "We are doing more, being more of a total solution provider than [having] a single focus of colocation hosting."