MSP News
Four Unique Services MSPs Should Consider Adding to their Portfolios
February 03, 2012
Managed services providers (MSPs) are adding new services at a rapid rate in an effort to increase revenues, broaden their portfolios and differentiate their companies in a competitive marketplace. Four types of new service opportunities stand out in the crowd as unique offerings to keep an eye on.
According to ChannelPro, the new service opportunities worth considering include: managed audio/visual services, desktop as a service, managed firewall services and managed e-discovery.
ABI Research predicts the global spending on managed telepresence and videoconferencing services will reach 19 percent compound annual growth throughout the next five years. That means those services are set to reach $1.2 billion by 2016.
Cisco is a major player in the managed videoconferencing services space, and the company recently announced that Dimension Data had become the first company awarded the TelePresence Video Master Global Authorized Technology Provider status from Cisco. Dimension is certified to sell Cisco TelePresence visual solutions to clients across 49 countries throughout the world.
"As a Cisco TelePresence Video Master Global ATP Partner, Dimension Data has made an investment in the global sales, technical and services capabilities needed to deliver the industry's most comprehensive and interoperable Cisco TelePresence Video portfolio," said Richard McLeod, senior director of collaboration for worldwide channels at Cisco. "Cisco values the commitment and expertise that Dimension Data has demonstrated to drive global customer opportunities for telepresence."
ABI also predicts worldwide spending on hosted virtual desktop solutions will reach $5 billion by 2016. That number represents solutions in which companies store virtualized desktops centrally and access them via a network or the Internet. ABI suggests that most of that money will be spent by larger companies for in-house deployments, but cloud-based desktop-as-a-service solutions are growing as well.
Cloud-based CRM solutions provider NexJ Systems announced just last month that it is teaming up with wealth management solutions provider Winfund to create desktops geared toward financial services markets. The companies are aiming to deploy cloud-based desktops that meet the security and compliance requirements of their customers and which are also hosted off-site.
“We believe this provides us with significant strategic advantage in new business opportunities and further provides our existing W.connect and W.insurance customers the ability to leverage additional functionality with their current deployment,” said Laird Elliott, president and CEO of Winfund.
Vendors like MindShift Technologies, Desktone and Nervogrid are working to offer hosted desktops or desktops in the cloud, which are also referred to as DaaS (desktops as a service).
Managed firewall services are another major growth area and one that has been around longer than other managed services. Industry analyst firm Gartner says firewall management basically began soon after firewalls came about, and has been around for more than 10 years.
Companies like Primus and Megapath have been involved in managed firewall services growth, and AT&T was recently awarded a $5 million contract to provide solutions to the Federal Trade Commission. The company's Government Solutions unit will provide Synaptic Hosting, Managed Trusted IP Services and Internet Protect Service as part of the eight-year contract.
AT&T's cloud-based security approach will help proactively detect and diffuse security threats in the cloud for the FTC, while also addressing increases in website traffic volume, according to Don Herring, senior vice president, AT&T government solutions.
The last new service opportunity identified is managed e-discovery solutions. Companies involved in lawsuits must produce emails, texts and other electronically stored information when responding to recovery requests, and locating and assembling that data usually goes beyond enterprise and law firms' technical abilities.
According to The Radicati Group Inc., 35 percent of businesses use or deploy e-discovery solutions, while another 26 percent are interested in using them. Exterro Inc. and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) recently announced a partnership to provide integrated e-discovery and information governance technologies. The Exterro Fusion has been integrated with the Hitachi Data Discovery Suite to offer a unified solution for seamlessly managing legal compliance requirements and e-discovery.
"For many corporations, information governance and e-discovery remain fragmented, disparate processes," said Jim FitzGerald, Exterro's director of product marketing and strategic alliances. "By integrating the technologies used to manage regulatory compliance and e-discovery, organizations can significantly drive down costs, improve efficiencies and mitigate risks."
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Edited by
Rich Steeves
