Data powers every business’ bottom line. It’s no wonder then, that companies are outsourcing their IT needs more than ever — relying on the expertise offered by professional managed service providers (MSPs). For MSPs, this means that the MSP software they use is more important. With the right tools at the ready, you can serve clients with limited budgets and knowledge — significantly enhancing their technological capabilities.
In fact, the MSP market is estimated to reach $557.1 billion by 2028. While this may sound like a golden age for MSPs, the increased demand for data protection services in particular raises the bar on what customers are expecting. To compete in such a crowded marketplace, MSPs must carefully choose their managed service software to ensure it delivers the components and capabilities customers seek.
To meet your clients’ demands for heightened data protection, you should consider:
- How reliable is the data protection you offer — and how easy is it to use?
- How efficient is the MSP software you use?
What is MSP software?
MSP software is a solution that provides service providers with a single point of view of all client IT systems so they can track, manage and troubleshoot system issues, network problems, software deployments / updates and security issues.
What data protection do you offer?
For today’s businesses, downtime is not an option. Even short periods of blocked data access can result in expensive fees, recovery costs, lost productivity, and reputational damage. Customers are concerned about the level of data protection they can count on from managed service providers – and your ability to deliver in a crisis (or to prevent one in the first place) can be the difference between winning and losing a sale or retaining a customer.
For MSPs delivering data protection services, you must ensure the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security of customer data at all times – and the software you choose has to be up to the task.

Differentiation through data protection
Integrating solutions that offer comprehensive data protection for your customers is a key way to differentiate your MSP software from your competitors and ensure that their business-critical data is kept safe and secure. Today, such high-quality services don’t have to break the bank either, making them accessible to SMBs and enterprises alike.
The reliability of a solution is a critical consideration when choosing the managed service software you will use to protect customer data. Some ways to evaluate that dependability include:
- Taking advantage of trials or demos of new software components
- Learning how software components from different vendors interact with one another
- Connecting with existing MSP users to learn how easy it is to integrate a particular data protection solution into other MSP software and tools you use
Components that play nice
Given today’s complex, evolving IT environments, you’ll find that few data protection solutions are “one-size-fits-all.” But it is possible to ensure that the components of your managed service software can integrate and work in concert – without compromising data protection.
Consider working with a vendor that delivers multiple solutions via the same MSP software. Leading providers now offer different software components via one solution, so you don’t have to cobble them together – reducing the risk of compatibility issues and time wasted learning individual tools.
For example, one backup vendor may also deliver file sync and share, disaster recovery, and notary services that ensure data authenticity. This kind of unified solution helps streamline your customer’s data protection plan, while positioning you to deliver more value and simplifying your life.
Expand your MSP software features to reach new clients
For example, one MSP may deliver a service that provides complete data protection services to include backup, cybersecurity and malware protection, disaster recovery, email security, endpoint protection, file sync and share and notary services that ensure data authenticity. Using MSP software that provides all of these features in one solution helps you streamline your clients’ data protection plan, while positioning you to deliver more value, simplifying your life and separating yourself from your competitors to ensure you can retain existing clients and acquire new ones.
Evaluating your MSP software’s efficiency
No matter how thorough your data protection services are, they need to be easy-to-use and efficient. Being able to check-in and report on system performance and data safety are essential to your ability to deliver high-quality solutions.
To make your managed service software stand out in the busy MSP industry – and make managing your clients’ IT infrastructure even more streamlined and productive – there are two key tools worth your investment:
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools
Remote monitoring and management (RMM) software can be incredibly beneficial for your team. These tools deliver an at-a-glance view into how your customers’ systems, applications, and terminals are performing – helping to ensure your team can respond quickly to any issues.
After these issues are addressed, remote monitoring and management allow you to deliver prompt incident reports if they are requested and ensure your clients remain compliant. In addition to making your day-to-day easier, it also benefits your customers: they enjoy smooth sailing (and are more likely to refer you).
Professional Services Automation (PSA) tools
Professional Services Automation (PSA) software ensures prompt access to 24/7 software support from your vendors. That support is invaluable when the inevitable questions arise regarding the third-party components that make-up your managed service software.
Many vendors use PSA tools as a streamlined helpdesk and ticket-tracking system that provides you and your customers complete transparency into issue management. Today, leading software providers offer both professional services automation and remote monitoring and management across all their services – equipping you with both of these tools so you can provide quicker responses to issues and more reliable, efficient, and secure customer data management.
Advantages of MSP software
MSPs can realize significant advantages from using MSP software:
Improved productivity and efficiency. Managing many clients using a single pane of glass saves your technical team significant time when tracking the operations of multiple IT systems and networks. Your technical team can focus on supporting your customers versus spending time training your staff on multiple solutions and switching to different consoles and screens.
Lower operational costs. The remote management capabilities that MSP software offers eliminates the time and costs associated with traveling to your clients’ sites.
Make faster decisions. MSPs’ systems provide real-time data that your technical team can use to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities and remediate problems faster.
The ultimate MSP software — Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud
For MSPs to stand out in an increasingly crowded industry, the ability to comprehensively protect customer data and respond quickly and transparently when problems arise is crucial. This ability depends significantly on the components that make up your MSP software.
Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud unites backup and disaster recovery, next-generation anti-malware enhanced with machine intelligence, and endpoint protection management in one solution. Integration and automation provide unmatched ease for service providers — reducing complexity while increasing productivity and decreasing operating costs. Key features include:
Cybersecurity. Stay ahead of modern cyberthreats with award-winning anti-ransomware enhanced with anti-malware capabilities focused on zero-day threats that complement your clients’ antivirus.
Backup and recovery. Minimize data loss across your clients’ infrastructure and workloads with the best backup and recovery technology, available in consumption-based or per-workload licensing models.
Management. Centralize your protection management and provision endpoints in minutes. Remotely assist clients and assess system vulnerabilities and security gaps. Increase visibility with built-in monitoring and reporting.
Disaster recovery. Allow clients and disaster recovery (DR)-enabled tenants to establish secure connection to the corporate network with their personal devices, or test failover in an isolated network environment.
File sync and share. Increase productivity by enabling your clients to create and securely share corporate content from anywhere, at any time, and on any device. Only get charged for the storage you use. Your clients can also leverage notarization and eSignature for data validation.
You can also expand your services to your clients with advanced protection packs:
Advanced Security. The Advanced Security pack extends the endpoint protection capabilities of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, enabling you to lower the risks to your clients with enhanced anti-malware protection and remediation services. The advanced pack simplifies deployment, configuration, and management tasks with advanced integration and automation.
Advanced Security + Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). Acronis Advanced Security + EDR enables MSPs to detect, visualize, and analyze advanced threats and hacking techniques that bypass other security layers. Its easy-to-understand interpretation of attacks empowers MSPs to rapidly investigate, respond, remediate and recover.
Advanced Backup. Paired with Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, the Advanced Backup pack enables you to extend the cloud backup capabilities your clients need to proactively protect their data.
Advanced Management. Spend less time juggling solutions and more time focusing on protecting your clients’ data, applications and systems. Adding Advanced Management to our integrated Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud solution enables automated patch management and easy work planning to reduce your administrative burden.
Advanced Disaster Recovery. Protect your clients’ workloads when disaster strikes by instantly spinning up systems with cloud-based recovery and restoring them anywhere. When you add Advanced Disaster Recovery to Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, you can easily extend the cloud recovery services your clients need.
Advanced File Sync and Share. The Advanced File Sync and Share pack extends Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud’s integrated secure file-sharing capabilities with fully remote notarization, verification, and online signing. Ensure data authenticity and reduce fraud by layering advanced features on top of the essential, pay-as-you-go service.
Advanced Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Acronis Advanced DLP empowers you with unmatched provisioning and management simplicity, to prevent data leakage from clients’ workloads via peripheral devices and network communications. With automatic, baseline DLP policy generation, you can accurately and efficiently create business-specific policies for each client.
Advanced Email Security. The Advanced Email Security pack, based on Perception Point’s unmatched technology, extends Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud’s capabilities to block any email-borne threat, including spam, phishing, business email compromise (BEC), advanced persistent threats (APTs) and zero days in seconds, before they reach end users.
Interested in learning more? See what Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud can do for your MSP business today.
About Acronis
Acronis is a Swiss company, founded in Singapore. Celebrating two decades of innovation, Acronis has more than 2,000 employees in 45 locations. Acronis Cyber Protect solution is available in 26 languages in over 150 countries and is used by 18,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses.