Steven Hall - President of ISG

It's been often remarked that the Chinese symbol for "crisis" is comprised of two other characters representing danger and opportunity.  The coronavirus pandemic has perhaps been the most dangerous global crisis since the Cold War, but for many economic sectors, it's created great opportunity.  The MSP & cloud service provider market is one such sector, which according to Steven Hall of ISG has grown an astounding 50% over the last 4 quarters.  Much of this is due to the crisis spawned by COVID-19, which accelerated adoption of both cloud and automation services, leading to enterprise digital transformation initiatives being expedited across the board.   As publisher of the ISG Index, the standard for marketplace intelligence on the global IT services industry, Steven is uniquely positioned to not only assess the current state of automation, but also peer over the horizon and see where things are heading.  In this episode we learn what Steven sees as the five major areas of automation MSP's must focus on to optimize their cost structures; why the number of bots deployed doesn't necessarily translate to fewer FTE's but still provides high value; and the many ways he sees automation affecting the business of MSP's.