Interest in Network and Security Services Grows

As both networking and security become more complex and difficult to manage, there will be a much greater tendency to rely on managed services, according to a survey of 700 IT professionals conducted by Cato Networks, a provider of software-defined network and security technologies. The survey also reports that managed global wide area network (WAN) connectivity platforms and firewall-as-a-service offerings are high on the list of approaches being considered. The survey results suggest that as computing becomes more distributed in the age of the cloud, many IT organizations are starting to come to terms with the fact that they often don't have the skills or resources required to keep pace. That creates an IT environment that is more receptive to leveraging expertise made available by managed service providers (MSPs). Historically, there's always been tension between MSPs and internal IT organizations, which often viewed the former as a potential threat to their jobs. But as enterprise IT continues to evolve in a time of prolific security threats, there's more willingness to collaborate. The challenge facing MSPs is how to go about having that conversation with internal IT professionals in a way that doesn't make them feel insecure.