After Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, we take a look at vCIOs in the United States. 70% of all registered Virtual CIOs operate in the USA. Because of this dominance the US vCIO trends are often difficult to separate from the international scene. When we talk about US trends, we are talking about the international trends at the same time.
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One year ago we announced a very successful polling game called the MSP East vs West All Star Game to get an overview of the geographical distribution of the US vCIO market. The poll confirmed that the eastern coast's movement is more matured than the west's. Also, almost a third of American vCIOs are operating in the largest metropolitan areas: New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Boston.
Based on our following research you can see the geographical distribution of U.S. vCIOs.
Now let’s see what we can learn from the recent research shown on the bottom of the blog post. VCIO experience and IT managed services provider company sizes hiring vCIOs in the US are nearly the same as the international trend: most vCIOs have more than 10 years of experience (80%), and are hired by companies with fewer than 200 employees, most of which (70%) only have 11-50 employees per company.
It is important to note that more than 12% of vCIOs are going to large organizations, with 10,000 + employees; a number much lower than in other countries, where small and medium size MSPs cannot gain much traction.
The 5 most popular schools among vCIOs in the United States aren't from the above-mentioned cities, which illustrates the wide range of schools there. Only 7% of American vCIOs studied at these 5 schools: University of Phoenix, Drexel University, The University of Texas at Austin, Western Governors University, Michigan State University. We think it’s important to point this out because it shows the vast number of choices vCIOs have in the U.S. in obtaining their education.
The most essential vCIO role is information technology (50%); however, the MSP 2.0 roles are significant too: in sales, in IT consultancy, and in business development. Very interestingly 8% of the vCIOs themselves are MSP entrepreneurs on their off-duty time.
Finally, it is significant to note that most vCIOs are using social networks to connect with industry experts, check references and create deal-making contacts. For this reason, they are members of C-level executive groups, Cloud Era and MSP network groups.
Please note: our insights come from staying open to new information. If you find that our research is not representative of your community, please share that perspective with us so that we too can all stay on the same page.
See previous parts:
- Virtual CIOs in New Zealand
- Virtual CIOs in Australia
- Virtual CIOs in Canada
- Managed Services Platform virtual CIO report
