I guess I'd be worried about.
Encrypt data on the drives? They can take a copy and eventually break it if they are really keen.
Encrypt data in transit? You'd need to worry about man in the middle attack, especially as they can put physical interceptors at the data centre.
Back door server login? You've had it.
@Aaron-Studer said:
So, now the question is can we keep DO from having access to the server/data?
Who/what is DO? 
Can't provide direct links, but any organisation claiming to offer NSA proof data hosting, is normally closed fairly quickly OR they have been proven to be mole agencies by the Government acting as informants. Providing back door access.
@Aaron-Studer said:
Also, I could host it outside the USA? Would this help?
In the case of law enforcement, if you are trying to hide from the NSA. Good flipping luck. If you host in a majority of countries, I'm pretty sure that if Uncle sam wants the data, whatever nation's own law enforcement will go after the hosting provider.
Or they'll send in Sam Fisher to where-ever the data lives.
Safest data is offline data in a safe. Paper records are impossible to hack.
Be careful when selecting templates.
Some are horribly designed, which can lead to poor performance and load time. Read reviews, look at performance benchmarks on themes, don't pick purely on looks alone.
@thecreativeone91 said:
It doesn't matter if it's out of cash they just put negative balance on your account.
Surely there comes a point when they pull the plug, especially with the number of refund requests C@C have been getting.
I got my refund no issue after the claim date. It's up to Paypal.
Maybe cloudatcost PayPal balance is out of cash? So now PayPal are chasing them for a debt
I think why I'm coming across as awkward is because I don't understand where this is pointed towards.
The MSP marketing machine works, It is making a lot of people money, it is making a lot of purchasing decision makers "happy" with the perceived value of the vendor relationships, whilst they are losing thousands.
In this thread alone, different people define an MSP by different criteria. So whether you call it
VAR/MSP/Magic IT provider
How does a business owner distinguish between a outsourced IT and a fixed service provider. What options do they have? OVernight the branding/marketing machine might call it something different, they might all become outsourced IT instead of MSP, would NTG have to change their definition to avoid the taint?
@scottalanmiller said:
Like you will likely have the MSP push you to overspend on Cisco and lock in further and further when doing something else might have saved you a fortune.
I'm not saying I disagree with you. But this is the bulk of what I see.
Finding the genuine projects not delivered by resellers or pushy vendors are few and far between. I'd love that backlash against vendor focused providers but...Not seeing it happening.
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't have partners for an internal IT department. That doesn't even make sense for an IT Outsourcer.
Surely it's a form of marketing/accreditation for companies to recognise, ok if they are a Microsoft Gold Partner in Exchange, Server 2012, they probably have a clue about the Microsoft tech.
Most organisations already have a product that they need supporting, if I am looking for someone to look after my Cisco network, I'm going to look for the company with the Cisco partnerships and connections.
I guess it's because I worked for a shop which had 6 staff, plus contractors, X number of clients. We heard and dealt with many other shops of a similar size, none of whom had a presence on Spiceworks. In fact there are even smaller outfits with 1-2 people who have not heard of it.
But surely the directory is broken even more, if a one man consultant with a website is an "IT Service Provider" on the community, then that skews the data even more.
Maybe the issue is no one knows how to classify providers anymore? Bit like "Cloud" services.
@scottalanmiller said:
As SW is the largest global pool of the market, it's a decent reference point. Few other resources have thousands of MSPs in one place to compare them.
But no one past a certain size seems to care about being represented there. So your data is skewed about representation of MSPs to begin with?
....But how can you call Softcat "Tiny"
Their annual boat party budget at 1 mil probably blows most SMBs out of the water.
Just seems crazy to call most MSPs tiny when there are a huge number of bigger players out there.
@scottalanmiller said:
NTG didn't enter the UK until after being active on Spiceworks. No idea what this is implying.
In relation to what you originally said which was:
@scottalanmiller said:
From what I have seen in dealing with communities like Spiceworks, MSPs are extremely small. It appears that the average MSP is a part time affair, typically one IT guy supplementing his day job. A few are multiple part timers like this.
What seems to be rare is the staffed MSPs that have dedicated IT and business functions that have enough people to qualify as a team and be able to have schedules, shifts, vacation, training and other internal resources. The ability to consult each other and bounce ideas, double check things, hand things off, etc.
It's like, your set of data is Spiceworks, so you are making a decision that everyone is tiny
Serious lack of data
That's like saying accountants don't exist because they are not a member of club X.
I've never heard of NTG in the UK pre-Spiceworks.
http://www.phoenix.co.uk/accreditations/
https://www.softcat.com/what-we-do/managed-services
http://www.qubicgroup.com/pages/qubic/about-us.php
How are you defining the concept of MSP?
@scottalanmiller said:
Where did this come from?
From the Microsoft demo of Windows 10 at Spiceworld London. They specifically said
"It will be a subscription based model after the first year, security updates will be completely free BUT if you want feature updates, you need to have a subscription"
The guy you "talked to"
Does he have a budget in mind? You are leaping from what sounds like a very low budget legacy network to quite a high cost system by comparison. If you do all this work, will they just say, oh yeah too expensive, thanks but no thanks.
Why is the choice to go physical or virtual dependant on NTGs involvement?
Surely you'd want to go virtual yourself no?
Not so worried about pirates, They can have a watermark for using a free OS
My big worries about 10: