MSP News

2012: The Year of Analytics and Cloud for MSPs, CSPs

By Erin Harrison
Executive Editor, Strategic Initiatives

’Tis the season for industry predictions and 2012 is looking like a year of opportunity for managed service providers in the technology sector, especially those providing cloud-based services.

Drew Rockwell, CEO of MDS, predicts a boom in analytics especially as it pertains to the customer experience and said that telcos can expect much more of cloud services and OTT players as well as managed services for operational efficiency.

The following are Rockwell’s MSP predictions for 2012:

1.      CEM and the Cloud – In 2012, the cloud will be a key differentiator for operators as they look to increase customer retention and provide value-added services quickly and easily. Rapid expansion of cloud-based and virtualized CEM solutions is expected as CSPs and businesses are more attuned to the benefits and agility that these can bring.

2.      Managed Services – To sustain the speed of innovation and competitive price points while remaining profitable, CSPs in 2012 will more readily adopt managed service options to enhance their operational efficiency, which is critical in this current period of restricted budgets and limited resources.

3.      OTT providers and telecoms – In 2012, we will see those not usually associated with telecoms begin to make inroads into the market, Rockwell predicts. Hardware and software players, and others such as Google and Facebook, will begin to offer services in the telecoms market. Legacy operators will increasingly be collaborating with these players to gain market share and provide innovation to stay one step ahead of the competition.

4.      Analytics and CSPs – CSPs will increasingly be incorporating analytics-driven business intelligence into their own business strategies in 2012, improving the customer experience through the use of real-time data, according to Rockwell.

In related news, hybrid cloud computing and mobile device protection top cloud backup, recovery and restore (BURR) software provider Asigra’s cloud backup and recovery trends for 2012, according to MSP News.

Cloud backup and recovery continues to undergo a number of changes as the industry evolves and grows. Five distinct market and technology trends for cloud backup that are based on end customer and service provider adoption rates as well as worldwide feedback have recently been identified. To read more about these predictions, click here.