**Editor’s Note: Click here to see which channel people were on the move in December.**

Most MSPs experienced strong growth in the past 12 months, with increased revenue from offerings such as cloud services and backup and recovery, to desktop and server support.

That’s according to the 2016 Kaseya MSP Pricing Survey, based on responses gathered from owners and operators of nearly 400 MSP firms across more than 30 countries. For the first time, it includes responses from both Kaseya MSP customers and the market at large.

The findings show a continued surge in overall growth for MSPs, especially for those offering security services, and points to significant opportunities in 2016 for MSPs to offer advanced services such as cloud services, security, and IT monitoring.{ad}

In addition, Kaseya announced the appointment of Miguel Lopez as its new senior vice president of MSPs. He has been with Kaseya since 2012 and previously was senior technical director, enterprise solutions.

Lopez tells Channel Partners that one of the key takeaways from this year’s findings is that high-growth MSPs that are growing faster than 10 percent are “simply offering newer services faster than other MSPs” and they are charging more than others.

“Challenges occur if you don’t evolve and offer different services because if you don’t, you will be no different than anyone else out there and will have a difficult time competing in today’s market,” he said. “There is just so much more competition at the generic offering level. Those MSPs that are willing to take some risk and be creative around bundles and offerings are the ones who will continue to see the rewards.”

As for his new role with Kaseya, Lopez said he wants MSPs to know that “we are here to help them grow.”

“Kaseya is adding new products to our stack that our MSP customers are able to leverage to help them provide the overall services that their customers need,” he said. “These new products can also help our customers to build new revenue streams. We have done a lot in a very short time and are looking at adding other products over the next 24 months. Stay tuned.”

According to the survey, the majority of MSPs experienced more than 20 percent growth over the past three years; however, high-growth MSPs are much less likely to be small MSPs, defined as either having fewer than 10 employees or 25 endpoints. High-growth MSPs are 25 percent less likely to have fewer than 10 employees, and three times less likely to manage fewer than 25 total endpoints than their counterparts.

High-growth MSPs charge more for their …

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… technicians and have a higher pricing variance for level 1, 2 and 3 technicians. Also, higher growth MSPs charge more on average for ongoing server support and maintenance per month.

High-growth MSPs are much more likely to offer new emerging services versus their lower-growth counterparts, which further embed them in their clients’ businesses, according to the survey. For example, high-growth MSPs are more than twice as likely to offer cloud-monitoring services than are their peers, and are 85 percent more likely to provide hosting services for customer-owned equipment.

In addition, high-growth MSPs rate security services as one of the key competitive advantages in 2016. The one-third of those who reported offering identity access management (IAM) also reported a double-digit annual growth rate over the past three years.

The results point to more growth in cloud and security offerings, at least for this coming year, Lopez said.

Adequately addressing security risks requires a many-pronged approach, including services such as patching and updates, audits and discovery, desktop security, and IAM. While nearly 90 percent of respondents offer patching and updates, there is still a lot of room for growth for the other three services, with desktop security, audits and discovery and IAM being offered by 72 percent, 64 percent and 34 percent of all respondents, respectively. 

As for cloud, high-growth MSPs outpace their low-growth counterparts in offering cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), 58 percent to 48 percent, and in expected revenue increases in 2016, 66 percent to 56 percent.