Acronis has launched its MSP Academy, an educational initiative that aims to provide MSPs with business and technological knowledge, skills and tools to excel and grow.

Acronis has offered technology and business training on Acronis products for service providers for more than 10 years through Acronis Academy. Acronis partners that went through training and certification through the Academy in 2022 saw a 60% increase in revenue from Acronis product sales and a reduction in support incidents by 40%.

In response to partner requests to expand the training portfolio beyond product training, Acronis delivered MSP Academy.

Jon McCarrick, director of evangelism at Acronis, said partners have consistently shared that there are two main problems when trying to grow and expand their businesses.

Acronis' Jon McCarrick

"First, many of our MSPs’ career backgrounds were focused in the tech space, so they lacked sufficient business school or marketing backgrounds," he said. "Second, they often expressed a struggle to find qualified employees with the right skill set. With this, we’ve designed MSP Academy to provide training that addresses both of these issues and enables our partners to unlock their full future potential."

Topics Covered by MSP Academy

MSP Academy covers various topics, including starting an MSP, running a successful MSP business, marketing an MSP business, and optimizing the efficiency and productivity of MSP technicians.

"Our dedicated team of evangelists work daily with thousands of MSPs, with many having direct experience in the industry," McCarrick said. "We utilized their joint knowledge and expertise to produce the initial phase, which is now available, and we’re working on a second phase of the MSP Academy slated to launch in early 2024. As always, we are communicating and receiving feedback from our partners on new topics they would like us to cover with the expectation that the MSP Academy will continue to evolve to meet these needs over time."

With regard to marketing, partners requested "concrete and actionable" tasks to be implemented, he said.

"As an example, our MSP event training will guide MSPs through the precise steps needed to successfully run an event," McCarrick said. "We are putting an emphasis on technical topics to make sure that the technicians of our partner organizations have a base level of understanding about a topic before delving deeper into more Acronis-specific training. This approach will equip MSPs with the foundation needed to grow and excel in their business. When partners grow, so does Acronis."

Participants can take an exam to receive a "Credly" badge to share with peers and customers, showing their qualifications and commitment to continuous learning by earning a degree from the MSP Academy.

Upcoming initiatives from Acronis include delivering hybrid boot camps in collaboration with cloud distributors, providing an immersive learning experience to keep learners at the forefront of industry advancements, and launching new online, hybrid and offline multilingual training options, ensuring that MSPs across the world can benefit from the program.