CompTIA: New Service Offerings and Business Models Shape Managed Services Market

A growing number of managed service providers are embracing new business approaches and adding more sophisticated premium services to their portfolios, according to new research by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based industry trade association.

CompTIA’s January survey of 400 U.S. MSPs finds that most firms are cautiously optimistic about business prospects due in some measure to actions they took during the pandemic.

“Like many businesses, MSPs were buffeted by two years of pandemic-induced economic upheaval,” said Carolyn April, senior director of industry analysis at CompTIA. “Some MSPs saw this as an opportunity to get creative and find new ways to provide value to customers, but others struggled to hold on.”

According to the survey, savvy MSPs shored up their business by expanding into new services areas and aggressively targeting things like improved customer experience and marketing efforts. Many of the MSPs also capitalized on the mass move to remote work, outfitting and managing customer technology networks that were relocated from centralized office cubicles to home offices. Eight in 10 MSPs said the changes they made in the past two years have had a positive effect.

MSPs continue to look for areas where they can add value. Providing a great customer experience (CX) tops their priorities. Nearly half (46%) of MSPs said shifts in customer procurement habits are driving change in their own business, while a comparable number (44%) said the demand for business consulting is also pushing them in new directions.

Complexities in cybersecurity are another area where MSP see opportunities to strengthen connections to customers. A net 93% of MSPs said that the sophistication of cybersecurity is driving change in their business models or will within the next 24 months.

MSPs are also expanding into “premium” offerings such as applications-as-a-service, data analytics, cloud-based services and compliance and privacy consulting. Among MSPs that have added premium services 62% said they expect to see strong growth in this category that’s on par with the rest of their business, while 19% foresee robust growth that’s faster than other services.

Channel Impact^®
The data demonstrates how MSP models are evolving in the pandemic/post-pandemic world.