Five Hard Truths MSPs are Facing About Cloud ROI

Cloud storage has become a fundamental component of any organization, especially for the businesses that MSPs support. As an MSP, you are at the forefront of technology adoption, helping clients meet their customers in an always-connected, on-demand, online ecosystem.

According to the latest Cloud Storage Index, 72% of organizations have used cloud object storage for the past five years. Cloud adoption has shifted to cloud accountability, with clients asking more challenging questions. Cloud storage bills are coming in higher than expected, leaving you to validate ROI for platforms not built for how data is used today.

We wanted to find out what’s actually going on with top-performing managed service providers navigating this landscape. So, we asked.

In partnership with Vanson Bourne, we interviewed senior MSP leaders managing massive, complex environments. What we heard was eye-opening, candid, consistent, and sometimes challenging.

Let's break down five hard truths that MSPs like you face when trying to build reliable, cost-effective cloud storage into their service stack.

1. Everyone’s data is exploding, and it’s not slowing down.

Data growth is not slowing down. In 2024, 3.6 exabytes of data were stored in the cloud, and IDC predicts that number will triple by 2028.

Call it AI. Call it compliance. Call it hybrid work. Whatever the reason, your clients are generating more data than ever, expecting you to keep up without losing a beat.

MSPs interviewed in the report are managing 15-20% year-over-year storage growth. Remote collaboration, security logging, and big data use cases like training AI models increase storage needs.

2. Most MSPs are still stuck in a single ecosystem.

To keep ahead of rising data demands, many managed service providers aim for a vendor-agnostic approach to address a wide range of client needs across industry, infrastructure, and digital maturity.

Different platforms serve different purposes. Azure works for businesses with Microsoft-heavy stacks. GCP is gaining traction for AI-ready workloads and analytics. AWS often powers general-purpose workloads. The right mix should align workloads with performance, compliance, and cost-efficiency.

However, the reality is that 70-75% of MSP storage workloads still run on AWS.

Why?

Getting out is expensive.

Egress fees become an ‘exit tax’, penalizing you for moving data, rebalancing workloads, or switching vendors entirely. If a platform becomes a better fit for a business you serve, the cost shifting can be hard to justify due to high cloud migration costs.

3. Rising access and usage are outpacing budgets.

In 2024, 80% of MSPs exceeded their cloud storage budget. Half of the budget went directly into fees instead of capacity.

Data is touched too often with everyday operations racking up fees fast.

• 85% restored backup data at least monthly

• 83% accessed archived data at least once a month

Every time you recover a backup, run tests for your disaster recovery plans, or pull archived data for a client, you're hit with API charges, egress fees, and tier transition costs. Until the architecture changes, you're paying more to meet the baseline of what clients already assume is included.

4. Cost priorities are leaving your data exposed.

Security remains one of the top concerns identified in the Cloud Storage Index year-over-year, but the actual implementation tells a different story.

Fewer than half of MSPs are using immutability (object lock) today, even though it is one of the most critical safeguards against ransomware, accidental deletion, and insider threats. Enabling core protections like object lock often means higher storage costs.

Key cost drivers related to Object Lock:

• PUT requests to set object lock configurations

• GET/HEAD requests to verify retention settings

• POST/DELETE requests if lifecycle policies are changed or extended

Baseline protection has become a premium feature, punishing best practices and compliance regulations, leaving data vulnerable to threats.

5. Your clients want outcomes, not cloud complexity.

Cloud complexity is bleeding into business strategy conversations, and not in a good way. Instead of starting the strategic conversation of implementing innovative solutions like AI adoption, you’re fielding questions about billing, trying to address the cost of just backing up data.

API call charges, retrieval fees, and tiering complexity fuel frustration because they are recurring hits that are tough to justify at the board level. Stakeholders don’t understand why it costs so much to access their own data.

Cloud migration was meant to solve aging infrastructure problems; instead, it's created a new one. Usage and access fees are breaking down everyday operations, making outcomes hard to identify.

The go-to storage platforms are eating at your bottom line.

If you’re under pressure to prove ROI and rethink your storage strategy, you’re not alone.

Without better tools and transparent pricing models, the gap between what clients expect and what current stacks can deliver is only getting wider. This gap makes itself known through renewal conversations, budget meetings, and pressure to prove ROI.

The Real State of Cloud for MSPs: 2025 Outlook & Strategy Guide captures candid insights from MSPs storing and managing hundreds of terabytes in the cloud.