Tech Aisle has some new data on Managed Services adoption. Managed services are a priority for 79% of SMBs and 97% of upper midmarket firms. Worldwide spending on managed services by SMBs and midmarket firms is estimated to reach US$104B in 2024. Data from the last five years also shows an increasing overlap between managed and cloud consulting services, with a growing need for cloud cost optimization, security and compliance, and cloud and storage optimization.
In the data are these two nuggets: only 26% of very small businesses with 1-9 employees currently use managed services, with another 23% planning to adopt them.
And the focus of demand for managed services is shifting from infrastructure management to core security and application management, business process automation, cloud management, analytics, AI, edge, and observability management.
Customers are interested in services further up the stack, and that’s exciting. And for many, terrifying. For those in infrastructure, they become a component of the solution more than the lead. I spoke with a large vendor about this dynamic – and how the messaging changes. Keeping your systems operational is table stakes, where improving business operations is now the goal, and it’s less effective to point to areas like the help desk or network switches to do so.