Barracuda Networks:’Managed Services offer partners great sales opportunities in EMEA’.

The Managed Services Provider (MSP) market is still growing. This market therefore offers channel partners in EMEA the greatest sales opportunities. This is the view of security specialist Barracuda Networks in the report The Evolving Landscape of the MSP Business Report 2019. The survey was conducted among fifty decision-makers from channel partner organisations offering managed services across Europe.

According to the study, managed services partners offer the greatest revenue opportunities. These opportunities are even greater than other factors combined: 54 percent of channel partners in EMEA say that managed services offer the greatest potential revenue opportunities. That’s almost four times more than the next option with the most answers.

This is not surprising, as confidence in the managed services market is growing. According to a 2018 report, the ratio of revenue from managed services to cloud computing and professional services was 4 to 3. This year, the turnover ratio has grown to 4 to 1.

So the turnover is increasing, and that is also evident from the report of Barracuda Networks. 66 percent of respondents said that more than 30 percent of their turnover came from managed services this year. Last year it was 52 percent.

Challenges

However, all this does not come without challenges. There is a risk of customers switching, and MSPs say they are aware of this. For customers, prices and available budgets are important factors in switching to another service provider. However, 55 percent of the MSPs surveyed cited another reason as the most important for losing customers: the fact that they were taken over by another company.

In addition, misconceptions with customers can cause problems for the opportunities of managed services, the study states. In addition, 89 percent of the channel partners surveyed said that last year and this year there was an important barrier.

There are also a number of challenges for customers nowadays, which ensure that they go to MSPs. According to 69 percent of partners guess a lack of the required IT skills is the main reason that customers purchase more MSP services. 61 percent also mention the migration to the cloud. In 2018, the desire to save costs was still cited as the most important reason, with 65%.