Episode 22: Paul Dippell's Service Leadership Mid-Year Report
Release Date: 08/27/2019
The Killing IT Podcast
Topic 1: CISA Under the Microscope CISA was called out in the Project 2025 document as a left-wing organization inside the government due to their warning about election interference. It is now subject to cuts and scrutiny. In the mass firings at DHS on February 14th, 130 employees at CISA were fired as they were “probationary” employees. Many MSPs and MSSPs subscribe to CISA.gov alerts. It is unclear how this will be affected. Wherever you stand on politics or related topics, small business needs a good source of security alerts we can rely on. What's your take? Topic 2 (AI, of course):...
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The Q4 2024 Killing IT Podcast features what may be our last discussion of robots for a long time! Topic One - Where Are My Robots??? We’ve been talking about this for five years - So where are the robots? We have a massive personnel shortage on many fronts. AI is creating jobs faster and faster. So why haven’t robots evolved to serve us? We’re on the verge. What’s the holdup? If nothing else, we're tired of talking about it. Topic Two - The Changing Economy of Our Industry In just the last five years, a layer of billion-dollar and near-billion-dollar companies are major players...
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We're back for Q3 2024. Quick question of the day ... then onto the topics of the day. Topic 1: MIT Releases the AI Risk Repository Thanks to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a major resource. It's definitely more for you than your clients. But we see great opportunity here. The public database contains 700+ risks as documented by published papers. It includes many categories, based on severity and other variables. Check it out here: https://airisk.mit.edu/ You can poke around online and gets some good information. Or download the entire database in Excel format. You...
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Topic 1: Massive Botnet Network Taken Down Police coordinated by the European Union's justice and police agencies have taken down computer networks responsible for spreading ransomware via infected emails, in what they called the biggest-ever international operation against the lucrative form of cybercrime. The European Union's judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust, said that police arrested four “high value” suspects, took down more than 100 servers and seized control of over 2,000 internet domains. Related Link:...
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Check out the bonus Killing IT content on MSP Radio's Business of Tech podcast! Today's a great day to subscribe to that: https://www.businessof.tech/subscribe/ -- -- -- Topic 1: The Current State of Mergers, Acquisition, and MSP Consolidation Mergers and Acquisitions are alive and well in the MSP channel. Jay McBain from Canalys predicts a growth of M&A of 50% in 2024. In addition to MSPs themselves, he says that we’ll see some major vendors acquired as well. The promise of these larger organizations is always that they’ll bring efficiency and profit. So far, that hasn’t...
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Topic 1: Chat GPT 1 year later. AI Article Summary: Elon Musk creates his own AI company called X.AI, while Satya Nadella of Microsoft invests in OpenAI and accelerates plans to incorporate AI into Microsoft's products. OpenAI releases ChatGPT as a "low key research preview," which becomes a hit. Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, faces challenges with its own chatbot and struggles with the decision to go open-source. Microsoft introduces its own chatbot in Bing, surpassing Google's efforts. Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent AI scientist at Google, decides to quit and reflects on the rapid advancements...
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We're Baaaaaack! The Killing IT team returns . . . with a fun and educational Q4 show. Topic 1: Overworking Have you heard the term Over Employment or Overworking? These are folks who manage to hold down two or three full time jobs using apps and BS. Are these just eager, hardworking "gig" folks, or are they thieves who are simply more interested in making money than earning an honest living? A few links: They even have their own web site. Topic 2: Catch up on Artificial Intelligence Wow! What a year. Are we in the middle of a singularity? ow much is this like the early...
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Topic 1: How much will AI change our business in the next twelve months? ChatGPT now has over 100 million users. Government wants to regulate it. We’re past the hockey stick moment. --- Topic 2: Oh Dear God - Minority Report crack for Ryan: Movie clip reconstructed by an AI reading mice's brains as they watch Researchers have put together a 30-second movie clip based on a group of mice's brain activity data that was recorded while they watched the footage --- Topic 3: How dead is the metaverse? KP: Not every “cool” technology has a big future. It will find its...
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Topic 1: The Arms Race is Here...AI is Definitely Moving Fast, but Will It Break Things? ChatGPT is now integrated in Bing as “Prometheus.” That sounds ominous. But Bard is also coming. And now Ernie. And Claude. Soon there will be AI bots generating “conversations” and disrupting the search industry on all sides of the globe. Is that a good thing? Sample alternative tools - ...And also, apparently writing software is about to become a less-lucrative career path. --- Topic 2: Revisiting the Cabana... Four years ago, we set out to change the way our industry discussed...
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Topic 1: Score 1 for the Good Guys in the Cyber Wars In a significant development in the fight against ransomware, the FBI announces that they have shut down a notorious cyber gang after infiltrating their system months ago and secretly giving decryption keys to ransomware victims. Topic 2: Ummmm … This is Some Seriously Scary Big Brother Stuff Scientists have announced that they are able to see people through walls using WiFi technology. And not just the “heat blob” from Hollywood movies … but detailed movements and positions. On a scientific note, this is cool. On a security /...
info_outlineThis Killing IT Podcast takes a different format from our previous posts. Here we take a focused look at an important webinar that was recently posted. A tip of the hat to Joe Panettieri Paul Dippell!
ChannelE2E published Paul Dippell's Service Leadership Mid-Year Report here:
https://www.channele2e.com/webcasts/jul2019/?utm_source=E2Ewcpage&utm_campaign=jul2019wc
A few data points discussed here:
- Profitability of product-focused vs. service-focused industries.
- How much "hustle" does it take to make the same profit in a product-centric business versus an MSP?
- Operational Maturity Levels. In particular, slide 14.
- A solid 1/4 of MSPs doing great with regard to OML. But that means 3/4 have lots of room for improvement.
- We spin that in the direction of opportunity to do more, do better, and make more money.
- Slide 16: The faster you grow, the higher your profit. A nice counter-intuitive point.
- How does this affect your need (desire) to hire a sales person? [Insert notes from Ryan on sales compensation strategies.]
- Slide 13: "There is no empirical data supporting the worry that either cloud or commoditization (or both!) is depressing financial results of MSPs."
- In fact, there's no evidence of profit erosion! Profit is growing.
Bottom line: There's lots of good news here if you're a Managed Service Provider. Note also that you can also make lots of money on products! You literally have to choose which direction you go.