Mobile Computing A Growth Niche for MSPs
One of the things the advent of Blackberry smartphones and other mobile devices have brought about is the ability for a small business to act like a big business.
A small business owner can now ride his bike during the lunch hour and read a PDF on an iPhone or send attachments to e-mails to a client via a mobile Outlook application on a phone.
According to VDC Research, the percentage of devices under third-party management is now between 10 and 15 percent of operable mobile devices used primarily for business. VDC expects that to reach 40 or 50 percent of all devices by 2015.
As more applications and processes are deployed on mobile devices, the need for hosting and storage services will spawn a new niche for MSPs.
Such chatter is common among MSPs that already offer hybrid services, telephony and IT or landline communications/Web hosting and design. Many in and outside of those circles are positing that mobile computing services could be offered as a cloud-based service and/or a managed service, delivered through a SaaS architecture and perhaps hosted by a third party.
David Krebbs, wireless and telecom Practice Director at VDC, calls this mobile component "next-generation managed services."
Perhaps current generation MSPs would do wise to think a generation ahead.
Posted by Jabulani Leffall on July 21, 2010 at 11:57 AM