IBM Sees Three Managed Services Market Segments for MSPs
Managed services can be difficult to define and sell, especially as cloud computing blurs the picture. But IBM is seeking simplicity as it begins to more aggressively embrace mid-market MSPs. Indeed, IBM is starting to see the managed services market in three clearly defined segments.
Managed services can be difficult to define and sell, especially as cloud computing blurs the picture. But IBM is seeking simplicity as it begins to more aggressively embrace mid-market MSPs. Indeed, IBM is starting to see the managed services market in three clearly defined segments.
For MSPs, IBM sees the opportunity to promote:
- Managed IT services. Here, MSPs maintain and optimize customers’ on-premises equipment. This includes everything from remote monitoring to managed security and managed storage services. Also, mobile device management will increasingly emerge here. Watch for IBM Tivoli in this market segment.
- Hosted IT services. Here, the services run within the MSP’s data center — potentially involving a hosted storage or hosted email service that the MSP essentially owns and optimizes for customers.
- Cloud services: Here, the services run in a third-party data center. In this case, IBM wants to be the data center operator, allowing MSPs to tap into IBM cloud services in a range of areas.
So how will IBM evangelize those three market segments and opportunities to mid-market MSPs? The complete answer, I believe, is still forthcoming…
This is an interesting play for IBM and other cloud providers. Solution providers who operate their own datacenters cannot scale to be a robust cloud provider. Solution providers will use their own datacenters to provide dedicated hosting capabilities and use a cloud provider such as IBM to offer their clients “true” cloud capabilities.
Solution providers want white label cloud solution and cloud providers including IBM are offering it to their business partners. Is it the right strategy for solution providers? Yes, provided solution providers can offer an integrated view of infrastructure and applications in these heterogeneous environments to their clients.
Raghu… We’ll be watching to see if solutions providers really gain that single, “integrated view” of infrastructure and applications…
Thanks for reading.
-jp
Joe, I completely agree with your theory that the final answer is still out there. I will also be interested to see if the general consensus adopts these same segments or if even the labeling will continue to evolve for the next couple of years. Even VoIP for Business is continuing to evolve despite it’s widespread acceptance.
Kevin,
Great point re: VoIP continuing to take on new forms. I thought it was interesting for a complex company like IBM to develop such a simplified view of the MSP market. And you can bet that IBM will begin to promote more initiatives into each of those three segments…
-jp