Sixty-two percent of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) now use managed IT and telecom services, according to the firm Research and Markets. That sounds impressive, but I’m always a little wary of such big claims about the managed services market. Here’s why.
Does a phone line count as a managed telecom service? Does on-demand voicemail count as a managed telecom service? You can see where I’m going: I think traditional telecom services pumped up Research and Markets survey results.
On the other hand, traditional telecom and cable services do pave the way for managed services. Predictable, flat-rate phone bills and broadband fees have made small business owners far more receptive to predictable managed services contracts.
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I agree that we would want to find out a little bit more of their definition of what Managed Services is. Not juston the telephony side but also on the data side too. There are many resellers out there that sell contracts that are nothing more than pre-paid T&M. To a customer they might consider this a managed service and check the “yes” box on the survey.
Lane: Thank you being the voice of reason. I consume market research whenever possible. It’s great to review numbers and search for trends. But sometimes the numbers say one thing but mean something else.
Managed telecom is particularly tricky. You can have check-box scenario you mentioned. Where there’s no real value-add. Or you can be an MSP doing managed telepresence, managed VoIP, managed unified communications, etc. Those are the folks we want to hear from on MSPmentor.