Sunday, 3 April 2016 Blog ehdf

Managed Services Provider Market Set For Growth

Managed services provider market in the ME is seeing a surge as enterprises look to sidestep the need for investment in ICT infrastructure and skills that are an expensive distraction from their core business. From network and data centre management services to disaster recovery, storage and backup, server management, security and IT support, it is possible to offload the day-to-day provision of significant chunks of the IT function, liberating financial and human resources to focus on productivity and efficiency.

Traditionally, large businesses have been relying on the expertise and services of managed hosting providers to offer secure, flexible and scalable solutions. However, over the last few years, we are seeing a growing trend amongst SMEs choosing to work with service providers for their data centre and infrastructure management requirements. Many more customers from a number of industry verticals are adopting Managed services. Sectors in Banking and Finance, Aviation, Retail, Media, Government, IT and Telecom in particular, have taken to managed services as ensuring a secure and reliable system is critical.

In fact, according to a recent survey by Frost & Sullivan, the managed services market in the GCC region is projected to reach US$3,116 by 2018.

Drivers for the growth

In today’s business environment, organizations need to adopt new technologies in order to expand their operations and improve productivity and customer experience. Even small to mid-size organizations will not be able to function, let alone scale-up their businesses without a strong IT infrastructure to support their growth. Many companies do not have the required resources to support a dedicated in-house IT team. Faced with mounting costs and an increasingly complex IT environment to manage, organizations in the Middle East are now more than ever looking at Managed Services as an alternative to manage and expand their IT infrastructures.

Managed Services Providers (MSPs) are evolving their businesses in the Middle East

MSPs in the region are definitely not ditching managed services to turn into pure cloud providers any time soon, despite customers deploying more and more applications on various types of cloud infrastructure. However, the managed services portions of their portfolios will have to evolve, to reflect a new reality cloud computing has created.

While it would be easier and potentially less expensive for a provider to operate as solely a cloud-services provider, getting rid of traditional managed services is not recommended. The sweet spot is to have a hybrid option, as customers will increasingly prefer to mix and match in the future.

Why eHDF?

eHDF is amongst the 1st providers of Managed Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services in the Gulf region. We own and operate multiple Tier 3 data centers, delivering managed services through reliable infrastructure, 24/7 support and guaranteed uptime, and is the only services provider in the ME to offer credit based Service Level Agreements. eHDF was the pioneer in the region to introduce hosted managed private cloud solutions and were the 1st in the UAE to launch public cloud services which can be bought from an online storefront.