Businesses are increasingly looking to service providers for managed connectivity, voice, security and other Internet Protocol services, according to a research firm.
According to Ovum, the worldwide managed-services market is expected to reach US$41.5 billion per year by 2009. The study featured data collected from more than 2,500 end users from companies using managed services in 20 countries across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia and representing the finance, manufacturing, retail, government, healthcare and education markets.
Peter Hall, Ovum’s research director, said more customers want service providers to deploy and manage network solutions to reduce costs and improve reliability. Significant opportunities exist for service providers developing and delivering managed services, especially in the areas of multi-service IP VPN, IP communications, security and Metro Ethernet.
.Other key findings from the study:
— Customers who have adopted managed services from service providers are largely pleased with that decision, based on cost reduction and higher levels of support and availability.
— Network security is the most commonly adopted IP service;
— By 2009, managed IP VPN will remain the largest portion of the market (53 per cent) but managed voice over IP (VoIP) will grow the fastest (65 per cent compound annual growth rate;
— The region including Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) currently leads in adoption of managed services, followed by North America. Latin America is currently the smallest market for managed services, but offers rapid growth potential for IP VPN and VoIP.
— The manufacturing industry is the broadest adopter of managed services, followed by government and finance;
— End users strongly prefer to purchase IP managed services from service providers who offer their services over Cisco technologies.
