Overview:
Organizations are in both a reactive and proactive mode in response to the current economic challenges. Reactively, they trim budgets and staffs. Proactively, they re-evaluate what is and is not core, assess their teams, and move people to strategic areas to concentrate on more tactical, business-value services and projects. They also selectively outsource some of the day-to-day monitoring and management to third parties, taking advantage of the predictable monthly expense that managed services offer.

A big driver toward managed services is the increased adoption of complex unified communication and collaboration applications. The increasingly virtual workforce has led to growth in adoption of applications such as VOIP, unified messaging, video conferencing, Web conferencing, and document sharing. Unfortunately IT organizations struggle to support these collaboration applications. Many work with limited on-site resources and inadequate, centralized management tools. They also find a lack of internal, specialized expertise.

Nemertes Research predicts adoption of managed communications services will continue to increase across the board in 2010 and beyond. We expect the use of managed services for other UC applications to double or even triple by 2011, similar to what we saw with managed VOIP over the last couple years.

Author(s): Katherine Trost, Research Analyst

Keywords: Third-party expertise, managed services, distributed workforce, branch offices, managed services triggers, WAN services, managed IP Telephony, Managed UC, Managed Communications, Unified Communications, Web Conferencing, Video Conferencing, Audio Conferencing, Instant Messaging, Unified Messaging, VOIP

Vendors mentioned: AT&T, BT, Orange Business Services, Global Crossing,Verizon,EDS, IBM, CSC,Dimension Data, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, ShoreTel, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft, Avistar, Lifesize, Tandberg,Google,BlueCoat, Cisco, Juniper, Riverbed, Clarus, EMC, Fluke Networks, Integrated Research, NetQOS, Psytechnics, Covad, Cypress, Global Crossing, Masergy, Packet 8, Alteva, Intelliverse, Webex, Citrix, iLinc, Adobe, Saba, Illuminate Live, BT Conferencing, GlowPoint, Skype, Sightspeed, Avaya, USA.net, Intermedia, Centerbeam, Prominic, Apptix, Dell, MXLogic, Message Labs, CapGemini

Read This Key Trends: Key Trends: Managed and Hosted Unified Communications

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