Managed Service Provider Week in Review

One of the prevailing questions in the managed services space is how the role of the MSP will be defined in the future. Managed service providers have been evolving in scope and range for many years and will continue to do so. This week’s top news items show just how broad that evolution may be.

According to new research from IDC, MSSPs are increasingly moving to the cloud so that customers may use their services on a demand basis. The new MarketScape report also shows that MSSPs are using big data analytics and other new technologies to predict threats and thwart them well in advance.

InterCloud Systems scored a $3.95 million managed services contract this week from a major Texas-based multinational corporation. The company will use InterCloud’s managed services and cloud platforms to provide an improved customer experience as well as detailed information about its users. InterCloud specializes in unified communications services as well as IVR and call center solutions. The company also sells hardware to OEMs in support of voice, data and optical networks.

In another major managed services agreement, Comverse will be supporting billing and customer service management for United Telecommunication Services (UTS). The multi-year agreement has UTS using the Comverse ONE platform to provide managed services to its customers in the Caribbean, South American and European regions. The platform helps increase operational efficiencies for network and IT departments and is expected to help streamline billing and customer management for UTS.

Edsouth Services is using private cloud services from Breakthrough Technology Group (BTG) to help adapt to new government regulations for their data center. The company, which provides loans to a large customer base throughout the U.S., increased its IT productivity by 60 percent and eliminated 90 percent of its expenditures through the BTG services. The private cloud solutions offer a central location where customers may access all their information through a single server. This minimizes the risk of data being lost or stolen and also offers virtual domains for each customer, enabling private access. BTG provides its private cloud solutions via AT&T data centers.