Managed Service Provider Week in Review

The managed services sector is growing by leaps and bounds, according to two new studies released this week. Recent reports show that B2B Managed Services as well as a variety of cloud computing solutions are expected to grow and gain traction.

The 39-page report from Stanford's Global Supply Chain Management Forum found a positive correlation between managed service provider (MSP) services and integration, with 96 percent of those polled commenting that their B2B programs had been made more valuable because of MSPs. An additional 96 percent also said they will increase their use of these types of services to trade with more of their customers and partners electronically.

The TechTarget survey showed that use of the cloud for disaster recovery (DR), desktop-as-a-service (DaaS), backup and business continuity is expected to rise. Those surveyed indicated that cloud adoption for those types of services will rise from 17.9 percent currently to 28.5 percent within six months. The use of cloud storage services for disaster recovery is expected to go from 36 percent to 51 percent within that same time period among those surveyed.

In related news on the managed business continuity services front, SunGard Availability launched its SunGard Assurance business continuity Software-as-a-Service platform. The solution is built to expand the company's user community, with a focus on "novice" planners who use the software just a handful of times per year. The new solution will be available on May 31, and was created with the input of more than 100 SunGard Availability Services customers.

And Yorktel released its new enterprise-class, cloud-based video conferencing services portfolio. The Yorktel VideoCloud solutions enable customers to use the company's hosted video infrastructure to access video conferencing over the cloud, instead of purchasing their own systems. The portfolio supports full integration with MIcrosoft Lync and Office 365 and enables connectivity from desktops, mobile conferencing clients, standard video conferencing equipment and more.