Business Technology Roundtable

Hiring a managed services provider shouldn't be a leap-of-faith decision-making process. Perhaps you have staff that could fulfill their responsibilities, but instead you entrust a key component of your IT infrastructure to another company. You believe they can do the job better and more efficiently. However, is that belief proven to be justified? This begs another question: who licenses or certifies a managed service provider? The topic came onto our radar thanks to a handful of companies claiming SAS 70 certification. The SAS 70 standard was developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to govern service organizations. (SAS stands for statement of auditing standards; see the AICPA page relating to auditing standards for more information.) Certification's Real Meaning You may assume that a managed service provider claiming SAS 70 certification has submitted itself to rigorous tests relating to its internal processes. However, according to Judith ...

I received an email the other day congratulating me on a column I wrote for NetworkWorld nearly three years ago entitled, "Why Managed Services Fail." The 'shelf-life' of web content always amazes me, but it is gratifying to have people stumble across my past writings and still find them timely. What struck me as I revisited this 2005 column was how many of my points were still true, "...Almost every supplier and service provider I talk to admits that selling managed services has been harder than expected." "The first problem these managed service providers face is packaging." "The second issue is pricing." "The third challenge is positioning these services properly." "But the biggest obstacle to selling managed services is poor sales skills." Sound familiar? Although industry research clearly shows that customers are becoming more receptive towards managed services and the economy is even driving an increasing numbe...

There's a touchy little secret about call centers: their employee turnover is atrocious; it can reach as high as 26 percent per year, according to one expert's estimates . As a result, companies strive to ease the stress of their customer service agents. Continental Airlines , the fourth largest airline in the U.S. with $14 billion in revenues, realized that by deploying VoIP technology with personal computers, it could route reservations calls to agents' homes. This not only reduced the need for call center real estate, but it also gives reservations agents the ability to both telecommute and time-shift their work. Today, almost 1,100 agents work at home. Turning To Videoconferencing Technology Unfortunately, even good ideas sometimes have bad side effects. Continental found that they could easily keep employees up-to-date on staff issues with regular teleconferences. But for training and evaluations -- activities that required visual interaction -- agents still had to get...

While traveling across North America in recent weeks, I've heard about the same two-part trend from multiple sources: Some small businesses are reducing their IT service contracts and delaying outsourcing decisions. But on the flip-side, mid-size businesses are accelerating their move to managed services . These trends are pretty easy to explain. Consider this: 18 percent of small-business owners in October said they were at risk of going out of business because of economic conditions, up from 9 percent in August, according to an American Express survey involving 602 businesses with 100 or fewer employees. Even worse: 79 percent of small-business owners said sales are decreasing. About two-thirds of the respondents said the tightening of credit has affected their business. 51 percent said they have had to tap personal assets in order to pay business expenses. With those concerns in mind, it's increasingly difficult for small business owners to focus on their IT strategies. The...

Somewhere between the economic panic and the managed services craze their resides a simple truth: Now is the time for all small businesses to carefully consider their IT strategies for 2009. I'm tired of reading wild statements that say managed services and Software as a Service (SaaS) are immune to the economic turmoil. It's far more accurate to say we've reached an inflection point of sorts, where small businesses need to review what they spent on IT in 2007 and 2008 to help their planning in 2009. Traditionally, many small businesses acquired IT assets -- PCs, servers, networks, applications and other infrastructure that they ran internally. But those acquisitions required big lump-sum capital investments. During the current economic turmoil, we're seeing a shift in the market. Smart small businesses increasingly depend on IT services. Much in the same way that they pay flat monthly fees for broadband and cellular services, small businesses are embracing managed ser...

Thousands of small businesses in the United States have already embraced managed services. Now, thousands of additional businesses across the globe are climbing aboard the managed services bandwagon. Consider the following data points: Asia Pacific organizations will spend more than $10.25 billion on hosted and managed services by 2010, up from $6.47 billion in 2007, according to Frost & Sullivan. Australia's managed security market will grow roughly 20 percent annually through 2013, the same research firm predicts. Small and mid-size enterprises will drive nearly half of Europe's managed services revenues -- jointly spending nearly 11 billion euros in 2008, estimates Forrester Research. Small business managed services spending will reach $5.4 billion in 2008, according to Techaisle. The data covers the US, United Kingdom, Australia, China, Brazil and India. In the US alone, small business managed services spending will hit $1.5 billion this year, Techaisle predicts. Ques...

When you're a start-up company or a small business, you enjoy a key freedom: You don't have any legacy equipment and you can make sure your IT dollars drive innovation. But over time -- as your staff, network and application infrastructure grows -- you'll wind up spending more and more IT budget on maintenance rather than innovation. According to various estimates, mature businesses spend anywhere from 80 percent to 90 percent of their IT dollars maintaining systems they already have in place. That's pathetic. And it's also impractical. Small businesses must either innovate or die. So, how can a small business remain focused on innovative IT solutions ? I've found the answer in my own company. Generally speaking, we outsource just about every piece of IT possible. Here's how we do it: 1. Get Predictable: We seek managed service providers, web hosting companies, developers and other partners who can handle day-to-day maintenance issues at a reasonable, predi...

Managed services, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and 'cloud computing' are gaining increasing attention in the press and among IT and business decision-makers because they promise to alleviate many of the day-to-day hassles of deploying and administering technology and applications. While these new forms of remote and web-based services have demonstrated many tangible business benefits, they have also disrupted the traditional value-chain of the technology industry. Traditionally, technology vendors relied on channel partners to extend their reach into market segments they couldn't address either by offering lower costs of sales or by delivering more customized solutions. Often the channel partner also took on the role of pre-sales consultant and on-site support provider. This model worked well when customers needed help with the initial planning and design, as well as the installation, integration and ongoing maintenance of the hardware and software. And, customers needed p...

With more and more managed service providers (MSPs) entering the market, your choices are expanding. If you choose the wrong one, however, you might wind up with more challenges than benefits. How do you know? According to Matt Cowall at Appia Communications , it’s often as simple as asking. In part one of this post , we covered three of the top five questions to ask a managed service provider: How long has an MSP been in business? What kind of support does the MSP offer? And what kind of redundancy does the MSP offer? Today we’ll cover the remaining two questions that Matt recommends you ask, and they’re arguably the two most important: What quality of service does the MSP provide? This is probably the most important question, of course. You’ll learn quite a bit about an MSP’s service quality when you check its references. Be sure to ask what happens when there are issues. Does the MSP respond quickly and take ownership of the problem? Another key indicator is the MSP’s service level ...

Joe Panettieri did a great job describing the IT management and business implications of the growing dispersion of today's workforce in his post "Managed Services: Safe at Home" . This trend is not only creating new challenges that are driving greater corporate interests in managed services, it is also attracting a broadening array of managed service providers (MSPs) to satisfy businesses' escalating needs. The office supply retailers are increasingly nibbling around the edges of the IT services market. The most obvious example is Best Buy's Geek Squad which has primarily served the consumer needs of the residential market, but is also responding to the needs of the small office/home office (SOHO) market which Joe described in his post. The latest example of this trend is the recent news that Staples is going to deliver a portfolio of IT services to small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). These services are going to center around the acquisition Staples made in la...

As more businesses allow employees to work from home, a new IT challenge -- and opportunity -- arises. It's impossible for employers to offer on-site, full-time tech support to all of their stay-at-home workers. But the rise of managed services -- including remote monitoring and pro-active administration -- can bring order to these highly distributed workplaces. The trend toward telecommuting is undeniable. More than 40 percent of American and Canadian companies let their employees telework, according to WorldatWork , a global HR association. As energy prices continue to fluctuate and businesses increasingly focus on environmental issues, the march toward telecommuting will surely accelerate. Home Networks Become Complex As a small business owner myself, my home office includes a network with multiple nodes -- three PCs running a mix of Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP; and my trusted MacBook Pro running Max OS X. Now, multiply that IT complexity across hundreds of home offices and you...

The benefits of outsourcing make a simple and strong case, and more organizations are choosing to do so. As a natural result, more and more companies are entering the managed services provider (MSP) market. According to Matt Cowall at Appia Communications , some of them are well-qualified; others are simply trying to take advantage of a market opportunity. Price is important, but it's not the only consideration, and the benefits of using an MSP can quickly evaporate if you choose the wrong one. Matt recommends five key questions to ask before selecting an MSP. We'll discuss three of them today. How long has an MSP been in business? As in any business, there's an art and science to offering managed services. One obvious way to separate the experienced MSPs from the wannabes is to ask how long they've been in business. If they've been operational for some time, they probably will have already addressed any service delivery issues they may have experienced in the begin...

During a recent CIO seminar I hosted in San Francisco, some attendees told me how they were trying to blur the line between business and technology. Other attendees told me they wanted to "close the gap" between business and technology. To me, business and technology are already one and the same. Business Technology (BT) is the next evolution of Information Technology (IT). Many technology bloggers write about information, applications, data, voice or video. In stark contrast, the term Business Technology acknowledges the convergence and interactions of these elements together. Where we came from When I was with InformationWeek in the 1990s, we wrote about data processing, management information systems and IT. But today, BT is a new view of technology; a 360-degree view, if you will, where technology is woven throughout the business operations, decisions and functions. The role of BT should be placed within the sequential context of people, process and technology. Meaning, ...