Managed Services Market: Still Growing, But How Fast?

The U.S. managed services market will grow from $29 billion in 2010 to $47 billion in 2015, predicts The Insight Research Corp. I’m often wary of IT market forecasts, especially since it’s impossible to predict how the economy and IT services demand will evolve four months from now — not to mention four years from now. But generally speaking, it sounds like Insight Research sees upside for MSPs as customers increasingly shift to IP networks. Here’s why.

Carol Wilson, whom I met during my days at Ziff Davis Media a decade ago, offers some deeper insights about the research report here on the Light Reading web site. Wilson, quoting Insight Research, writes:

Generally speaking, Wilson’s entry explores the managed services market from the telecom perspective. Smart move, especially for PC-centric MSPs that are trying to push beyond remote laptop, desktop and server management. The MSP opportunities for managed voice, data and video certainly seem real. Just last week, BlueWater Communications Group — a Cisco partner that recently built a managed services NOC — told me the company continues to see healthy growth from Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring for IP voice and data networks.

But how much growth can the MSP industry truly expect? Insight Research certainly sounds optimistic, predicting annual growth of about 15 percent through 2015. Plenty of VARs and MSPs would welcome 15 percent annual growth over the next four years. But I wonder how many of those VARs and MSPs will actually achieve — or exceed — that growth rate?

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