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Growth, Not Innovation, The Opportunity For Australian MSPs In 2025

Australian MSPs are shifting their focus for 2025, prioritizing growth and cloud adoption over innovation, amid rising cybersecurity concerns.

Written By

Matthew Sainsbury

Nov 4, 2024

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New research from one of Australia’s largest channel organisations, Datacom, indicates that business priorities are shifting, moving into 2025.

According to results from Datacom’s fifth annual cloud report, “growth” remains the top priority, as it was last year. However, cost management and customer acquisition have replaced a focus on employees and innovation. Both of those still rank highly, but improving platforms and operational matters have become the primary focus when chasing growth.

The shift in focus away from employees is perhaps a reflection that the depth of the skills shortage is easing, with recent Australian government data showing that the number of jobs with a shortage has declined from 36% in 2023 to 33% today. However, the Datacom report also highlights that “finding and retaining skilled staff” remains a challenge, indicating that some organisations are looking for options other than recruitment to fill the skills gap.

Meanwhile, another set of government data shows that a lowering interest in innovation is a consequence of increasing economic pressures across the nation.

A New Focus On Platforms For The New Year

In its report, Datacom highlights that another key priority for organisations is to move as many workloads as possible to the cloud. Indeed, just 33% of Australian organisations have a dedicated hybrid cloud strategy, with most simply planning to move to the cloud wholesale.

“Organisations are increasingly recognising the need to deliver better performance and customer experiences balanced with increased cost efficiency and resilience which is driving continued cloud adoption,” Datacom’s Director of Cloud, Mike Walls, said in the report.

“Realising these outcomes goes beyond technology and requires you to adapt how you work and leverage new operating and governance models, automation and digital tools.”

At the same time, organisations are also keenly aware of their cybersecurity risk, and security is the #1 IT priority this year as it was last. Increasing regulation and severe penalties for data breaches means that, for the channel, 2025 will continue to be a story where cybersecurity is the critical pathway for MSPs and other partners into what should be a good year for technology spending.

Determining which cloud provider is right for which company can be challenging. Read our guide to learn more about AWS, Azure and Google Cloud in 2025.

Matthew Sainsbury

Matthew is a Sydney-based multi-disciplinary journalist that has covered IT for 15 years. . In particular, he covers B2B IT and other channel topics in the APAC region. In addition to Channel Insider, Matthew’s work has been published on ARN, where he previously served as the editor, as well as CRN and AFR. On the side, Matthew is an award-winning arts and entertainment critic and author, and he also participates on the judging panel for the Australian IT Journalism Awards.

Growth, Not Innovation, The Opportunity For Australian MSPs In 2025

A New Focus On Platforms For The New Year

Matthew Sainsbury

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