Nearly half of IT directors and executives say that their organizations use outside service firms to help migrate and/or manage their public cloud workloads, pointing to a big market opportunity for IT managed service providers. That’s according to a new survey by 2nd Watch about public cloud workload management solutions.  The actual percentage showed 45 percent are using outside service firms.

Managed service providers are a top option for many of the 500 IT directors and executives surveyed. Thirty-nine percent said that they are currently evaluating MSPs and other third-party service providers, and 15 percent of respondents said they are managing their public cloud workloads internally.

“We discovered from the survey that many organizations encounter operational challenges after migrating applications to the cloud with their existing tools and service providers,” Joel Rosenberger, 2nd Watch’s executive vice president of managed services, said in a prepared statement. “There’s a perception that managing IT workloads in the cloud is a snap, but clearly that’s not the case.”

2nd Watch co-founder Jeff Aden told MSPmentor that he believes the survey highlights the increasing demand for service providers.

“[Organizations] should engage with cloud-native consulting, implementation and management companies. These companies are made of experts that have transitioned from legacy technologies to new tools and skills that match the latest products,” Aden said. “Additionally, organizations can think in large-scale terms, meaning, ‘What tool would I need if 60 percent of my workloads were in the public cloud?’ The answer is probably not an on-premise tool with traditional pricing structures.”

Why are organizations leveraging MSPs?

Outsourcing managed services can make it easier for IT departments to focus on their everyday operations while their cloud resources are effectively controlled by a third-party. This option is appealing to many organizations, which is reflected in recent data.

An April 2014 American Digital Corp report revealed 61 percent of IT leaders said they plan to invest in outsourced managed services over the next two years.

MarketsandMarkets also has predicted the managed services market’s worth will increase from roughly $143 billion in 2013 to $256 billion in 2018.

“[The] managed services market is witnessing accelerated growth in recent years due to the advancements in cloud computing, big data and mobility services,” MarketsandMarkets researchers said.

All good news for MSPs.

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