On behalf of Kaseya I would like to wish the entire MSPmentor community and The VAR Guy (MSPmentor’s sister site) a healthy and prosperous new year! Looking forward I would like to offer the following predictions…
10 Managed Services Trends for 2009
- Economy: Things will get worse before they get better. Expect that consumer confidence will continue to have an adverse impact on the economy during 2009. MSPs can take advantage of helping their customers fix their IT costs and improve systems performance by leveraging the managed service model.
- MSP Market Growth: Overall Market for Managed services will continue to grow. During an economic downturn services that add value and efficiency are typically highly regarded and will continue to be in demand. Managed Services as a business has sufficient momentum and value to be one of the few areas of growth in IT spending during 2009.
- Consolidation: Small MSPs without aggressive client acquisition and retention strategies may roll up into larger MSPs . Consolidating customer bases and broadening field presence will be an advantage to aggressive service providers. During 2009 watch for roll ups and mergers between MSPs.
- Expansion: Smart MSPs will expand service options for their clients. Adding additional services is great way to extend the footprint within a customer. Services like Managed Backup, Anti Virus, and extended platform support (e.g. mobile device, embedded devices) will become additional sources of revenue for service providers in 2009.
- Competition: Independently operating MSPs will face additional competition from OEMs marketing their OEMS. Vendors like Dell will compete head to head with MSPs in markets where they have a local point of presence. Managed service providers should strengthen relationships with their customers and differentiate by offering personalized services.
- Marketing: Verticals, Verticals, Verticals. (Did I mention Verticals?)
- Innovation: Service Providers will continue to out task aspects of their service offering such as 7X24 monitoring, help desk and basic remediation service to scale their businesses.
- Security: Trustmarks and other security certifications will become more important in 2009. MSPs will turn to independent and objective sources to further differentiate themselves and establish credibility with their customers and prospects.
- Delivery Models: Cloud computing & Virtualization will shorten the supply chain for IT service delivery. More businesses will adopt cloud infrastructure and virtualized platforms to avoid capital investment and streamline deployment of new systems. Managed Service Providers will develop specific SLAs for the management of these environments.
- Technology: IT Automation will fuel efficiency and productivity for MSPs . Service providers will continue to adopt integrated platforms for monitoring, remote management, patch management, proactive systems maintenance, backup and endpoint security.
Note: Dan Shapero is Senior Vice President, Marketing at Kaseya. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of MSPmentor.net’s Platinum sponsorship.
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11. MSP software companies will continue to get acquired as Microsoft, Symantec, HP and other big IT firms round out their SAAS strategies.
Brent: I think Microsoft may also design its own MSP-oriented software. And watch for Symantec to round out the Symantec Protection Network SaaS platform. As for HP, their managed services strategy remains a mystery to me.
I particularly agree with Dan on point number 6. I think RMM solution providers should take the lead in helping the channel in creating verticals. Segment the market and help channel partners create services specific to the business functions and (business) operations trends of that industry. This enables the channel partner to focus on specific segments, create segment specific services and pricing, targeted marketing efforts and over a period of time, understand the business trends of that industry. This helps channel partners sell better and make profitable business and in turn have more revenues and most importantly loyal and committed channel partners.
Here’s hoping #9 rings true.
Cloud computing and the utility services model that can be delivered via that medium leveraging virtualization technologies is exciting to say the least. We see new services and new market segments that have the potential to embrace this delivery model.
The cloud will give MSP’s another avenue to create recurring revenue.
I foresee that in the right datacenter environment SLA’s will not only become easier for MSP’s to meet, initial service delivery windows should shrink. The challenge facing MSP’s is similar to the early days of managed services, educating the client and helping them embrace what to them is the unknown.
-Brian
Brian: MSPmentor is a FIRM believer in cloud computing. I’ve never seen our company’s physical servers, nor have I seen our physical Web systems. But I know they exist because I’m blogging on them right now — thanks to someone’s cloud
Best
-jp
IT Automation and Cloud Computing are two major trends for 2009. MSPs should capitalize on these!