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Under the current economic conditions, managed services have emerged as particularly critical for businesses in South Africa, as they aim to contain costs and improve efficiency. Enterprises are increasingly outsourcing non-core IT processes in order to focus on their core mission. The emergence of cloud computing has given impetus to this trend, as businesses are now able to access the computing resources they need, when they need them, over the internet. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are positioned to benefit immensely from cloud-based offerings as these services essentially circumvent the need for businesses to invest in costly capital infrastructure.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (ipcommunications.frost.com), South African Managed Services Market, finds that the market earned revenues of $2.09 billion in 2010 and estimates this to reach $3.86 billion in 2016.
In South Africa, cloud computing is now a reality, and is poised to become the standard mode of delivering computing resources in future. More pertinently, a significant majority of enterprises have invested in, or are planning to invest in, cloud services in the near future.
"Increased uptake of cloud-based services will be driven by the ever declining broadband costs," notes Frost & Sullivan's Information and Communication Technologies Industry Analyst Ishe Zingoni. "The SME sector represents a key market for cloud-based offerings, as these companies often cannot afford to build their own infrastructure. The declining costs of bandwidth will make these offerings affordable and attractive to the sector."
Very often, the cloud presents SMEs with the only route to access normally expensive computing resources. Shared cloud infrastructure, or the public cloud, is a viable option for SMEs that cannot afford to build data centres of their own. Thus, cloud services are poised for greater uptake in future, as businesses move towards managed hosting services.
"A critical enabler of this level of uptake will be the projected falling of bandwidth prices on a sustained basis," remarks Zingoni. "As infrastructure becomes far more ubiquitous, particularly undersea cables and terrestrial networks, the costs of bandwidth and internet-based services, such as cloud offerings, are expected to fall."
Although managed services' key value proposition is its ability to reduce costs, the reality is that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a number of businesses is still high, or has even subsequently increased, negating any potential benefits to be derived from these services. A case in point lies in areas such as software as a service (SaaS), where challenges related to integration with existing systems have resulted in companies running SaaS systems parallel to their existing systems. This has further increased the total cost of ownership for these businesses.
"Another manner in which managed services can potentially impose additional costs on businesses, relates to the sub-optimal customer service that can emanate from poor service provider response times and lacklustre technical innovation," concludes Zingoni. "It is imperative for service providers to focus more on providing true TCO savings, rather than merely on price."
If you are interested in more information on this study, please send an email with your contact details to Samantha James, Corporate Communications, at samantha.james[.]frost.com.
Managed Services Market in South Africa is part of the Communications Services Growth Partnership Service programme, which also includes research in the following markets: South African Network Management Services Market, South African Client Requirement for Outsourcing Selected Business Data Services and South African Hosted Contact Centre Market All research included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan (frost.com), the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 40 offices on six continents.
Managed Services Market in South Africa / M7B5-63
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