Since the advent of internet technology, enterprises are continually dealing with increasing workloads or what is commonly known as the ‘big data’. Managing workloads include the proper alignment of company data, resources and targeting them towards desired business outcomes.

With the IT industry facing issues with digital transformation like transitioning from hardware or software solutions to as-a-service cloud solutions, they need help in selecting the right technology stack, its implementation and support to ease their transition. Here, the role of Managed Services Provider comes in.

What are managed services?
Under Managed Services, the users make use of application or resources that are completely managed by a third party i.e. a managed service provider. The MSPs allow users to outsource their various network and application needs with complete support. The applications are hosted and managed by the managed service provider only.

Role of Managed Services Provider
Hosting and managed service providers play an active role when it comes to helping enterprises evaluate right digital transformation strategies, migrate workloads, managing networks and infrastructure, backed with securing data and applications.

There presents a vast set of opportunities for managed service providers with increasing application and infrastructure migration from on-premises to cloud.

Latest trends in managed services and web hosting industry
Following are the managed services trends and web hosting industry trends that will provide a guide to market opportunities for providers of these services:

1) Increasing Web Hosting and Cloud computing trends
The enterprises will continue their shift towards Hosting and Cloud Services. A report by 451 Research (451 Global Digital Infrastructure Alliance) found that 53% of the survey respondents expect to see high spending on web hosting and cloud in the coming 90 days while, only 3% expected a decrease.
Amongst this, SaaS and application hosting will incur major area of spending (51%), followed by infrastructure services (29%) and managed services (10%).

It will be a golden opportunity for the managed service providers, as the report also stated that users of SaaS and application hosting services will spend 59% on managed services.

2) Infrastructure monitoring and alerting is the most used managed service
The 451 Research report suggested that the infrastructure/application monitoring and alerting services will be the most used managed service, accounting for 53%. It will be followed by other managed services like Backup and Recovery (49%) and Disaster Recovery (41%).

3) Growth in channel partner MSPs and M&As
MSPs will see a rise in the number of customers who look for complete technical support and migration apart from the basic implementation services.

Some may even start running partner programs for their resellers to help them manage the end customers. This will help MSPs reach the market faster.

SMB customers prefer a unified provider of services, hence Managed Services’ industry is witnessing an increasing number of M&As (Mergers and Acquisitions).

For this, the service providers need to re-align every business process and evaluate resources, lines of business, system integrations, brand value proposition etc. Both organizations need to ensure their financial health and capacity before getting into any M&A activity.

4) Bundled IT solutions’ trend
Rise of new, innovative services in the cloud and hosting will be a normal affair. To accommodate all these services in a unified offering, MSPs have started offering bundled solutions.

In the coming years, too, bundled solutions will be a good way to upsell and cross-sell services. This is because they stand as enterprise-wide solutions, fulfilling all requirements at one place – a win-win solution for the end customer and the seller.

5) Shifting focus on hybrid and multi-cloud management services
Earlier, enterprises went either to a privately hosted solution or a public cloud, but now they want to make use of mixed benefits of both, through hybrid cloud.

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 90 percent of organizations will adopt hybrid infrastructure management capabilities.

The rise in the hybrid cloud adoption is making MSPs shift their focus towards the flexibility and versatility of hybrid cloud solutions.

Conclusion:
These are the latest managed services trends and web hosting industry trends. These trends are the results of emerging technologies and customer demand changes in the market.

To succeed and thrive in this era of cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), AI, cybersecurity and always-on access to apps and data, MSPs need to identify trends faster and grab the opportunity before their competitors do.

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