Leading industry analyst firms such as Gartner, IDC and Forrester predict an annual growth of approximately 30% in the managed services market. While fully hosted models (cloud-based) are growing in popularity, the bulk of this managed services growth comes from the increased demand from organizations that want remote management of their existing, dedicated communications infrastructures.
The traditional, fully outsourced, hosted services model has typically failed companies in the past, as it simply replaces internal problems with external ones, and offers far less flexibility and control of the company’s strategic communications needs. Companies want to outtask, rather than out-source, where they improve their operational cost structure, but retain ownership of the physical assets, and therefore ensure a low barrier to exit any management contract.
This remote management approach offers a highly flexible, full-feature service with low capital and operating costs. This approach enables new commercial models, such as “pay by the drink”, event-based services, and increasingly, the delivery of cloud-based UC applications and services.
The managed services market will be supplied by carriers, outsource service providers, tier-2/3 managed service providers (MSPs), and potentially in the future, suppliers such as Google, Skype and Amazon will enter the market.