With so many companies sourcing Managed Service Providers where do you begin with ways to improve your company performance?
Today?s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President and COO at SafeSourcing.
This week we have been looking at the *MSPMentor?s Top 100 (actually it was the top 501) providers and the associated trends in this space among the suppliers and their customers.? In particular, we are focusing on the most commonly offered services and what they may mean to your company and its profitability.? Today we conclude the series by looking at the last three services.? Even though the percentages are smaller, these three services are ones that many companies are really beginning to look for.
Desktop as a Service (62%*) ? Virtual desktops have been around for a while but many companies are beginning to leverage them in new ways especially as employees are using many different types of devices in their work day.? With all of the traditional benefits of a hosted solution such as managed maintenance, no hardware costs, managed backup and security, the big new advantage is the fact that employees can access their software applications, files and desktop from any web capable device from anywhere an internet signal can be found.? Trends indicate that this number will continue to increase as companies look to employ the capability in their business.
Hardware as a Service (62%*) ? Hardware as a service has been a growing area for MSPs but is still yet to really become a consistently strong player everywhere.? Some of this has to do with the fact that not all hardware lends itself to the model, and some has to do with the fact that many companies are looking to spend more on software and services than they are on hardware.? All of this may change very soon as Amazon begins to introduce a concept with its Kindle Fire that looks a lot like the mobile phone industry where companies pay virtually nothing for hardware and upgrades while they continue to to renew their service contracts.? As this concept grows many new companies will be looking to leverage the service, taking the hardware and investing in the services and applications.
Managed VoIP, (47%*) ? Standard phone services are becoming one of the hottest new services companies are looking for.? With improved hardware, data compression and cost effective bandwidth companies are beginning to realize how much more they can leverage with a managed Voice over IP phone solution.? Enterprise management, monitoring and control are just some of the benefits many companies are finding in this solution, making it an up and coming sourcing category.
To understand more about how we can help you find vendors to meet some of these needs, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.? We hope you have enjoyed this series on MSP popular services.
We look forward to your comments.
* Source: MSPmentor 501 Global Report, February 2013, all survey participants.
