Structure Research Ltd. is an independent research and consulting firm founded in 2012 that has a defined niche of analyzing infrastructure services — especially internet infrastructure.

“We’d describe ourselves as a smaller-focused boutique research firm,” said Philbert Shih (pictured), founder and managing director of Structure Research. “We live and breathe on a daily basis the life of a service provider, and that service provider could be … a 10-man shop that’s walking around here — there are many of those — all the way up … to the hyperscale clouds.”

So what are the trends that Structure Research sees happening for internet service providers?

Shih spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Acronis Global Cyber Summit event in Miami Beach, Florida. They discussed internet infrastructure and service provider trends, challenges and predictions (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Hyperscale computing and the ISP market

The big trend that Structure Research is seeing today is the impact of hyperscale computing and what that does to the market that these service providers play in, according to Shih. There are two things that hyperscaling is forcing providers to do: They have to specialize-focus and drive value from the infrastructure.

“You have hyperscale just grabbing huge chunks of the infrastructure and IT real estate out there, and how that affects MSPs, or service providers, is that there’s probably a little less market than you would’ve liked pre-hyperscale,” Shih described. “You do get to host or manage or run on the public cloud, so that brings the punchline here to be … it’s all about value add. What is the value add?”

The trend, then, is that organizations that are a little more specialized still like to work with actual service providers, according to Shih. Specialized organizations need to back up infrastructure, security requirements, compliance requirements — and being able to do all that can sometimes can be difficult. If a company can work with a third party — like Acronis International GmbH’s cyber platform — it enables companies to be able to deliver those kind of services and get back to focusing on what they’re good at: managing customers and dealing with them, Shih added.

“It took sometime for the MSPs to feel it, and now they’re reacting,” Shih concluded. “The market is changing. Customer requirements are becoming more sophisticated, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, listen. We’ve got to get out there and do something.'”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Acronis Global Cyber Summit event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Acronis Global Cyber Summit. Neither Acronis International GmbH, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE