2009-11-09 13:03:04 -
With increasing demand from small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well as increasing supply, remote managed services have emerged as a rare growth area in this tough economy. As a result, annual spending on remote managed IT services by North American SMBs is expected to increase 3.3 times in the next five years, representing a compounded annual growth rate of
28%, according to a new report, The Emerging SMB Managed IT Services Market Opportunity in North America :
just published by AMI-Partners.
“While SMBs have been steadily increasing their reliance on IT over the last several years, they have always been challenged in managing their growing IT infrastructures. The severe economic conditions of the last one year have forced SMBs to look for more cost effective ways to manage their IT. Remote managed services offered by 3 rd parties provide 24/7 availability of critical IT infrastructure without increasing the need for internal IT staff,” according to Anil Miglani, SVP of IT Infrastructure and Managed Services at AMI. Some SMBs use remote IT services selectively for critical areas like security and storage, while others are now extending the use of remote services to manage PCs, servers, networks, communications equipment & devices, etc.
Yet, the industry is still in its initial stages. “Of the total installed base of 60 million PCs and 8 million servers in North America, only a tiny fraction is currently managed remotely, offering tremendous growth opportunities for managed service providers,” says Miglani.
At the same time, local channel partners are increasingly offering remote managed services to better serve their customers with fewer resources. While some partners deliver remote services from their own infrastructures, others have started relying on cloud-based infrastructure including remote management software that has dramatically reduced their barriers to entry. “By using automated software to remotely monitor and manage their customers’ infrastructures, channel partners have increased their productivity while also improving their service levels,” according to Melissa Chong, Senior Research Analyst at AMI and chief architect of the study.
However, with increasing reliance on automated software to deliver the services, these channel partners need to shift their focus from technical staff to sales & marketing staff in order to get new customers and manage their customer relationships.
The potential growth of this market is also attracting several new types of providers like telecom companies, IT vendors, distributors, retailers and online resellers in the SMB IT services market currently dominated by local channel partners. Given the diverse and fragmented nature of the SMB market, channel partners will continue to play and critical role in serving these customers. Therefore, most of these new providers will need to understand the local channel partner ecosystem to capitalize on their close relationships with SMBs.
Special Note: AMI will host a webinar on the emerging North American managed IT services market on Tuesday, November 10, 2009. To reserve your seat for this webinar, click here or call 281 866 9066.
Related Studies
AMI’s just published “The 2009 Emerging SMB Managed IT Services Market Opportunity in North America: How Cloud Computing is Transforming the SMB IT Services Industry” :
provides a comprehensive overview of the rapidly evolving remote managed services market in North America from both demand-side and supply-side perspectives. The study will help business planners and marketers understand the key dynamics of this fast-growing, but still highly fragmented market in North America. It explores the key patterns and drivers of end user adoption, and discusses the different models services providers are using to support them. It also presents detailed market sizing and forecast for nine types of managed services in the US and Canada along with key market segments for various services and strategies for targeting these segments. This research draws on AMI-Partners’ comprehensive quarterly and annual surveys of small (1-99 employees) and medium (100-99 employees) businesses and channel partners as well as detailed discussions held with several managed service providers and other key players in this market.
About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses.
The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and “go-to-market” solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.
AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.
AMI-PartnersQuoted Analysts:Anil Miglani, 212-944-5100 (ext
505)
amiglani@ami-partners.com : mailto:amiglani@ami-partners.com orMelissa
Chong, 212-944-5100 ext 523
mchong@ami-partners.com : mailto:mchong@ami-partners.com orMedia
Relations:In US (New York):Nancy Carty, 212-944-5100 ext 581
ncarty@ami-partners.com : mailto:ncarty@ami-partners.com orIn
EU (London):Claudia Jachtmann, (44) 208 987 2756
cjachtmann@ami-partners.com : mailto:cjachtmann@ami-partners.com orIn
Asia Pacific (Singapore):Matthew Foo, (65) 6220 5535 ext 101
mfoo@ami-partners.com : mailto:mfoo@ami-partners.com orIn
India (Kolkata):Jyoti Singh, (91) 33 4003 3093 ext 223
jsingh@ami-partners.com : mailto:jsingh@ami-partners.com orIn
India (Bangalore):Rati Ghose, (91) 80 4148 2661 ext 36
rghose@ami-partners.com : mailto:rghose@ami-partners.com orIn
China (Shanghai):Venu Reddy, (86) 21 6390 6298
vreddy@ami-partners.com : mailto:vreddy@ami-partners.com
