New Hedge Fund Managed IT Trends Report Shows Industry Shift in IT Outsourcing and AI-Driven Services

Agio, a leading cybersecurity and managed IT provider for financial services firms, published its inaugural 2022 Hedge Fund Managed IT Trends Report. The survey, conducted earlier this year, captures the opinions and perceptions of recent, current, and future technology management and information security programs, initiatives, and readiness from 100 hedge fund practitioners across the technology, operations, cybersecurity, and compliance fields.

Survey respondents revealed that, coming out of the pandemic, firms are reevaluating their options with respect to in-sourcing versus outsourcing IT management. Looking ahead to the next two years, 89 percent of firms that currently in-source IT management said they are likely to allocate more spend to outsourced services. The driver behind this shift is a need for heightened security (54%), increased access to public cloud management and support expertise (46%), and more responsive end-user support (44%).

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Of those firms already outsourcing IT management, 91 percent said they are likely to switch providers. Among the largest hedge funds that currently outsource (funds with +$5 billion AUM), nearly two-thirds (64%) reported they were likely to change service providers in the next 24 months because their current vendor is unable to support a public cloud environment.

In discussing how the managed service provider (MSP) model will change in the coming years, respondents predicted providers will employ artificial intelligence to remove service friction and increase service uptime (47%), as well as to enable support agents to be more responsive when issues do arise (47%). Most firms (51%) also predicted that MSPs will soon be measured and compensated by how well they limit break-fix issues versus how many issues they resolve.

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“Viewing IT management and security operations through a single lens is essential to our vision of delivering secure, reliable, and resilient information systems,” said Bart McDonough, CEO and Founder of Agio. “We also agree with survey respondents that MSPs must evolve now or perish. We’ve made meaningful investments in AI-driven tools that empower our support agents to deliver better client service and improved system availability. That combination of human brilliance and predictive analytics is the future of managed services.”

Other topics explored in this year’s report include how firms are adjusting to the impact of new regulations; what steps firms are taking to ensure system uptime and information security while supporting a distributed workforce; and how the industry is shifting with respect to managing systems on-prem, in the cloud, and across multiple cloud environments.

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