Research from Techaisle's SMB Managed Services report indicates that small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. will be spending $7 billion on managed services in 2011 and will continue to grow in double digits for the next several years, an increment of more than a billion dollars each year. The data is based on a survey of 2000 SMBs and 600 channel partners in the US.

As a percent of support and maintenance (known as break-fix), U.S.-based SMB managed services' spend will increase from 27 percent in 2011 to 40 percent in 2015. More than one in five small businesses (companies with 1-99 employees) use some type of managed services with greatest use observed among businesses with 50-99 employees. Another percent of small businesses plan to use managed services suggesting robust opportunities for MSPs (Managed Services Providers). Of the US medium businesses (100-999 employees), 65 percent are using one or more managed services.

Techaisle's survey also revealed that more than 30 percent of SMBs do not know who to go to for managed services solutions. Those using such services subscribe to an average of three managed services solutions. On the positive side, channels are being more proactive, 54 percent of SMB channels are initiating discussions with their SMB customers.  However, only 30 percent of channels are pure-play managed services providers. While a majority of them are offering storage services, 34 percent, very few of them have their own infrastructure and rely upon their vendor partners or other datacenters. 

"These channels are the most squeezed for revenues and hence a percentage of them are rapidly planning to add cloud or mobility to their suite of offerings," the report noted. "Techaisle believes that while SMB cloud, mobility and managed services are all fast growing technology areas, the channels that begin to offer all three will have the most synergies and biggest gains."

The global public cloud services market will more than triple in size over the next five years to reach revenue of $66 billion in 2016 and the market will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.4 percent from the $18 billion it will reach at the end of 2011, according to a recent forecast from independent technology analyst firm Ovum.

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