Positive Market Growth for Managed Services

CompTIA highlights trends in managed services with a new study.

By Cecilia Galvin

What's the outlook for managed services? Sunny, say channel partners who participated in a July 2009 CompTIA study, Trends in Managed Services. Of the 400 mostly senior-level U.S. IT pros surveyed, 84 percent expect the managed services market to increase in the next year, and 90 percent of those receiving at least some revenue from managed services expect their own services revenues to increase. The attraction of the model, they say, is both high margins and demand from clients.

Around-the-clock support is the top feature clients look for when deciding whether or not to work with a managed services provider. Two others are customer service and lowest price. Regarding service level agreements (SLAs), the most important elements to clients are response times, 24/7 support, and data security and privacy.

Currently, the most popular types of services for which organizations are using outside IT firms include PC maintenance and repair, security, network/firewall monitoring, email management, and storage/backup. The primary reason given for managed service usage is simply the lack of time and resources to manage the IT function in-house. Among organizations planning to save money by migrating to an MSP in the next 12 to 18 months, nearly nine-in-10 expect to save at least 10 percent over running the function themselves.