Growth projections:

According to a recent survey conducted by Nemerte’s research about 60% of the participants said that they plan to increase their use of managed services in 2009. Some of the top drivers being budget cutbacks, shrinking staff, lack of specialized expertise and rising demand to support complex applications. In 2006, 27% of research participants were using some form of managed services. By 2008 that number had more than doubled to 65% and in 2009 60% of participants are expanding their use of managed services. Source: Network World .

Gartner too in one of its recent reports talks about an accelerated shift in IT services due to recession since the companies have to strictly conserve cash. Outsourcing hence is an alternate delivery model of choice.  This will also revive the traditional outsourcing models towards a new pricing model to access services based on per-user per monthor a per-unit per month basis.

Gartner also recommends that service providers accelerate their service offerings and pricing models to suit the requirements and demands of enterprise customers. And NetEnrich is doing just that with both enterprise and  managed services.

The Seismic Global NOC powered by sophisticated tools/technology and staff ensures the best service delivery experience to its VARs. Apart from a well defined NOC support system with L1, L2 and L3 engineers, flexible packages to support different VAR and user needs and a very competitive pricing model, the Seismic continuously strives to evolve its offering with new and dynamic programs. Our ‘fast, predictable and painless’ on-boarding has minimal steps to sign up and set-up our onsite manager in your environment. Apart from our standard Gold, Platinum and Platinum+ offerings, we very recently added the Remote Network Device Management service as an add-on service for network devices and switches.  

Our managed services are also expanding beyond the VAR channel to partner with datacenter service providers and technology vendors to provide integrated solutions. Click here to read more about our practice areas and service offerings within each.

And this you’ve probably already read before, the enterprise side of our services is driven by a people-processes-technology strategy supported by custom SLAs and flexible service offerings to meet our customer needs and very flexible engagement models. The service delivery framework is supported by Virtual Private Management Gateway – our exclusive technology to deliver a secure and compliant engagement.

NetEnrich partners with Ingram Micro to deliver remote monitoring and management services with the Seismic Global NOC. Seismic provides complete managed solutions with various customizable packages to meet specific end customer needs with its own set of monitoring tools or by integrating with LPI.

According to the old-school fundamentals, it’s not all about providing advanced technology and flashy applications but just developing a solid differentiated/branded offering around managed service capabilities. Which means that there needs to be a well defined go-to-market strategy and a structured sales and marketing initiative around that.

That said, what goes into making a ‘well defined’ go-to-market strategy for unique service positioning? Don’t state-of-the-art tools and technology become integral to creating a valuable selling proposition? People, processes and technology are quintessential components of service delivery and it is imperative to highlight the superior technology to be a market leader.

Going back to CompTIA’s research, response times, data security, privacy and 24/7 uptimes are critical components to establish a niche. How do we ensure that these scale in every engagement unless we have a robust people-process-technology framework? A technology framework such that it provides the highest levels of security and compliance while delivering operational efficiency.

This is where NetEnrich/Ingram’s Seismic offerings bring in value to the VAR community with a trickle- down effect to the end user enterprises. More about the Seismic NOC in my next posting….

According to MSP Mentor’s Joe Pantenerri the US MSP market is going to grow at 7% annually through 2012. Some say it is a conservative estimate and the market should be growing at almost 20%. In either case, every managed service provider would like to get a slice of this growth pie and the eventual big question is HOW? What is the USP in this market which will put you ahead of the curve?

Evidently, it’s a fragmented space with continual influx of entrants and the need for existing players to solidify their niche. There are some key factors that help to establish market leaders vs. laggards in this space.

Some factors taken very seriously by end users according to reports from CompTIA’s research:

Metrics such as response times, data security, privacy and 24/7 uptimes.

The flexibility factor. There is no one size fits all SLA model. Customization depending on end user’s service and delivery preferences become key.

Next, how do these services help to let enterprises focus on core initiatives by offloading all routine maintenance and troubleshooting to their VARs. Not sure how one could quantify this, but ROI calculations compared with revenue growth could help in establishing a pattern.

Fourth, MSPs need to approach their clients with a consultative approach rather than being a solution provider. This would mean being more proactive in examining client habits, down to the applications they use and find ways to increase efficiency than mere monitoring and maintenance.

The list of these differentiators is endless. But you might be intrigued to find out about NetEnrich’s managed service strategy and how we are positioned to take off?