Of particular interest to managed service providers should be the fact that the managed portion of the security services pie is slated to almost double during that timeframe — from $8 billion to $14.9 billion by 2015. That $14.9 billion is part of an overall projected spending pie of $49.1 billion across the entire security services market by 2015, according to the Gartner report (“Forecast: Security Service Market, Worldwide, 2011″).

Gartner research director Lawrence Pingree said:

“[The uptick in managed security services] is largest driven by organizations looking at managed security services (MSS) providers as a way to maximize resources and lower ongoing operationg expenditures on security. Demand in the small and midsize business segments is also high as businesses continue looking to external parties to provide them with additional security expertise and resources that they may be lacking organizationally to help them make the right security decisions or provide security functions externally.”

North America was listed as the biggest market for security services spending. Revenue is expected to top $14.6 billion in 2012, growing to $19 billion by 2015. Those figures are for the overall security services marketing, which includes consulting, development and integration, management, software support, and hardware maintenance and support.

Check out more IT channel news on SearchITChannel.com and follow us on Twitter! Here’s how to follow Heather Clancy directly.

The templates, which were developed in conjunction by the CompTIA Managed IT Services Executive Forum and the Institute for Partner Education & Development, are focused on:

• Setting pricing levels
• On-boarding new customers for on-premise offerings
• Creating service level agreements
• Developing and packaging new managed services

You can find the templates in the Member Resource Center.

Check out more IT channel news on SearchITChannel.com and follow us on Twitter!

So, you may already know that the vendors in this area call this stuff Managed Print Services (or MPS), not to be confused with Managed Service Provers (or MSPs). Yes, I know, it bothers me too, which is while I’ll actually avoid using acronyms for most of this particular blog entry.

I’ve actually spoken already with two of the major printer vendors about their thoughts around this subject. This entry isn’t meant to be any kind of comparative view about their respective programs, I will just relate a couple of their core foci. (Wow, I actually got to use that word in context!) And, a disclosure: I have done some white paper work recently for one of the vendors that I am about to mention, OKI Data.

Dena Bernard, director of customers satisfaction and services for OKI Data, views MPS as an opportunity for printer resellers to build a more trusted relationship with their customers even as margins from straight product resales continue to decline. Businesses of all sizes are scrutinizing every facet of their IT infrastructure and managing printer lifecycles, as well as the consumables related to use them, has become a higher priority. There are several reasons for this, Bernard says, including the need for companies to minimize their capital budgets, regulatory compliance considerations, and even corporate sustainability/green IT initiatives.

“Printing costs are not well understood,” Bernard says. “Many companies are undergoing downsizing and they are seeking to minimize costs. Being able to help them understand their printing cost and helping them control them in a way that matches their printer needs. This is a valuable skill set.”

Realistically speaking, any reseller that continues to base their printer business solely on earning hardware margins will find business tougher over the next three years as fewer businesses buy printers outright and more seek to establish a leasing or managed service relationship. One analyst firm, The Photizo Group, believes the growth rate for these services will be 25 percent into 2010. Growth for straight business printer sales, on the other hand, will be flat at roughly 6 percent.

OKI Data isn’t naive enough to think that a solution provider will be able to just drop all its other business practices in order to get focused on managed print services. It is, in effect, hedging its bets by creating a wide range of special printer technology, managed support services and programs that allow many different elements of the channel to become involved. These services all sit under an umbrella program called Total Managed Print and include everything from a starter program that pays the VAR an agent fee up to special equipment designed for members of the channel that are staking their entire business on these services and solutions.

“This is a program for the channel built by the channel,” Bernard says. “It lets the partner plug in at their level of capability.”

Xerox has been developing its U.S. managed print program for the past three years (it started in Europe about five years ago), according to Tom Gall, director of value channel marketing, who represents the Xerox PagePack initiative.

The rallying cry for Xerox is helping IT solution providers talk about printing in terms of the cost per page. The challenge in establishing manage print services within accounts is the relatively long product lifecycle for printers: It is rare that a company will switch out more than one-third of its printers in any given year, says Gall. That said, that sort of behavior just begs for a managed services approach, under which customers can have better visibility into where their true costs lie, he says.

Both Xerox and OKI Data believe that providing the services and infrastructure so that their partners can manage heterogeneous printer technology (instead of just their own devices will be critical). Equally as important: Both vendors believe that the partners who will be successful with managed print initiatives are those who dedicate human resources to this challenge: a managed print champion, if you will.

I’ll leave you with this video about PagePack from Xerox and a couple of its channel partners.

Most of the time I write about Web 2.0 services and technology concepts from the point of view of how a solution provider might use these ideas to build out their own marketing, sales and recruitment processes. But Tata actually is building out a service based on helping companies build out their own strategies with respect to Web 2.0.

So, Tata and WorkLight will be helping businesses figure out to use things like Facebook or iGoogle or iPhone applications or RSS feeds within the context of their day-to-day operations securely and, probably equally as important, productively. At the heart of the platform to do this will be WorkLight Server, which is WorkLight’s portal product. Here’s a page on its products.
So, here are the sorts of things that Tata will focus on:

• Helping companies build their customer bases virally through consumer social networks.
• Looking for new revenue sources based on personalization of Webe 2.0 services.
• Figuring out whether it’s possible for a company to use an application that is hosted on the Web for one of their own internal business processes, knocking out something that may be proprietary or that takes too long to develop or update. (This is more in the realm of helping a business assess, for example, an application that is offered only as a service such as Salesforce.com’s platform.)

There’s a vertical market twist to the new practice. The two companies first figure to focus on financial services, retail, travel and hospitality, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and the IT services industry.

Heather Clancy is a high-tech business journalist and communications strategist with SWOT Management Group. She can be reached at hclancy@swotmg.com.

The SOC in Alexandria, Va. is one of Symantec’s four centers throughout the world. The others are in England, Australia and India, and together they process 2 billion incidents a day for Symantec’s managed security services customers. Here are some photographs from inside the SOC and some more information about the facility:

Screens like this one are found throughout the Security Operations Center. They provide real-time information about the biggest security threats, where they’re coming from, and how Symantec is addressing them.

Symantec analysts use a program called the analysis response console (ARC) to process their customers’ threats. One screen contains a queue of incidents waiting to be analyzed, and the analysts can pull up specific information about each incident on the other screen to determine the appropriate course of action.

Symantec’s systems process most of the 2 billion daily security incidents, but about 3,300 are elevated to the analysts’ level every day.

Symantec’s response to the elevated incidents varies, depending on each customer’s contract and the severity of each threat. Customers often receive threat updates by email, and Symantec will call customers when there is a verified attack.

And at the end of each shift — the SOC runs 24/7 — the analysts meet to discuss the day’s biggest threats and look for trends.

Spierkel’s answer?

“Buying from my competitors.”

The response tickled the audience of more than 400 solution providers. But Spierkel said Ingram had worked too hard at supporting partners to be cut out of the picture because of a competitor with a cheaper price. It was the first of many times during the week that Ingram would preach the value-over-price mantra.

Attendees agreed that Ingram’s support can sometimes make it worth overlooking distributors that slash prices. But throughout the week, partners highlighted a larger issue. As their business models change to focus less on pushing product and more on selling managed services, their relationship with Ingram is changing too.

“There is a divergence of needs between Ingram and the partners,” one partner said on condition of anonymity. “My needs are not necessarily those of Ingram’s any more.”

That’s because the partner has decided it is more beneficial to build his own hosted services infrastructure than go with Ingram’s Seismic managed services offering.

Another VTN member said Seismic came a little too late.

“We invested in the technology before Ingram started Seismic and we were a little annoyed,” said Larry Baum, CEO of The Computing Center. “But of all the aggregated programs out there, I think Ingram’s offering is the best.” So The Computing Center offers a “hybrid” of services from its own infrastructure and from Seismic.

Ted Warner, president of Connecting Point and founding VTN member, said it comes down to “are you going to outsource or do your own deal. We do our own thing.” Many long-time VTN members said they have the business processes in place to start offering their own services and be more profitable than they could be through a partnership. Still, Warner stressed that Ingram and fellow VTN members have been fully supportive of that choice.

Many partners have said that newer VARs are more likely to benefit from Seismic, and one newer member of VTN confirmed that “I don’t think I could build up the variety of services that Seismic offers,” he said.

For its part, Ingram pitched Seismic hard all week, including in keynotes and during sessions. Vice president of services Justin Crotty, who runs the managed service program, urged partners “to combat commoditization” by differentiating themselves in ways other than price (namely through services). Then he urged partners that have built their own infrastructure to join Seismic when they are “ready for a refresh” or to add new services.

Whether or not his message stuck will be seen over time.

Are you sitting down? You should probably be sitting down for this one.

You ready? OK. Here goes …

You’re dead.

Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just passing the declaration along. It comes from MSPAlliance president Charles Weaver, who told me this week that customer demand and the failing economy are making it impossible for solution providers to be strictly resellers anymore.

“The day that many people said was coming is finally here,” he said. “The sure-play VAR model is officially dead.”

With the economy in the proverbial tank, business customers are putting off big purchases — sales that VARs are counting on to make their numbers. But if VARs start offering more managed services, they can diversify their revenue and at least somewhat weather the storm, Weaver said.

A few weeks back, Weaver wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post, “MSPAlliance VAR Protection Program,” in which he said:

The MSPAlliance is announcing a VAR protection program to help alleviate the pressures these companies have been facing for the past decade. The MSPAlliance will help all VARs eliminate their dependence on shrinking product margins by educating them on a new way of earning revenue. This ground breaking program includes helping VARs add IT services revenues (primarily delivered by the VAR), thereby improving margins and strengthening relationships with clients.

There’s not really an MSPAlliance VAR Protection Program, but Weaver’s organization does offer help to VARs who want to get into managed services. For a real, formal program, the MSPAlliance has turned to Microsoft. The two goals of the new partnership are to educate solution providers on managed services best practices, and to create an MSP certification standard.

If these efforts are successful, there will be a lot more MSPs out there looking for customers. The natural concern there is market oversaturation, but Weaver said he’s not worried.

“I have not seen any demonstrable proof that we have penetrated the business consumer market,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for the MSPs out there.”

VARs, do you really feel the grim reaper lurking around every corner? And MSPs, do you think there’s enough room in your sandbox for a lot more kids to play?

• Star Solutions (February 2005)
• PWI (March 2005)
• NST (April 2006)
• Tactix (September 2006)
• Helio Solutions (August 2007)
• Sales Strategies (a.k.a. SSI) (September 2007) (No WONDER the CEO wouldn’t return my calls last fall!)

Sweeney says the first three months of any merger integration are the most critical for long-term success. During that time, his team concentrates on helping the incoming sales team understand the broader breadth of products and services they can sell. “You are trying to find successes that the sales professionals or engineering professionals can see immediately,” he says.

So how’s Incentra doing? While I don’t have access to their books, Sweeney says the solution provider added 130 new customers during the first six months of 2008 across all facets of its business. For the six-month period ended June 30, Incentra reported $107.5 million in revenue, compared with $55.8 million in the previous year. (Consider, of course, that Helio and SSI were new acquisitions that kicked in during that time period.) Services revenue for the period was $14.7 million (up 49 percent) and product revenue was $92.8 million (up 102 percent).

Like many other solution provider CEOs I’ve gabbed with over the past month, Sweeney claims the ongoing economic uncertainty hasn’t really made a dent in his growth patterns. One trend that he is watching closely, however, is how customers respond to green technology and energy efficiency discussions.

“It’s big and getting bigger,” he says. While Incentra doesn’t actually engineer end-to-end data center buildouts, Sweeney says the Incentra team is closely studying power consumption metrics for the various technologies it represents. Green will become “the standard methodology for how you view any new technology solution you are creating,” he says. In fact, in many cases, he says the ability of a customer to take on a new project in a slower economy is many times tied to a green initiative.

Heather Clancy is a business journalist and communications strategist for high-tech channel and sales consulting firm SWOT Management Group. You can reach her at hclancy@swotmg.com.

Sure, Chrome is fast and clean-looking. But it really doesn’t have any “Cool! I wish I’d thought of that!” features that dramatically improve the browsing experience. So what’s all the fuss about?

One word: potential.

Or three words, if you’re Hubie Brown: tremendous upside potential.

Google partners see the browser as a way to lure Microsoft Office users into using Google Apps instead. But that’s just the beginning. The blogosphere is awash in discussion about the different ways that Google and even solution providers could one day use Chrome to their advantage:

• Advertising: Google could use Chrome to collect even more data about user behavior, which it could in turn use to charge even more money for even more targeted advertising, according to The New York Times’ Bits blog. Google’s already the undisputed king of online advertising. Putting its browser to use in this way would set Microsoft back even further in its so-far-failed attempts to catch up.
• Operating system: Google says this isn’t the case — they call it a “Web app engine,” not a “Web app OS” — but regardless, Chrome is designed to optimize Web-based applications. If, as Google predicts, the business world becomes less dependent on on-premise software, reliance on browsers will grow as reliance on operating systems falls. As GigaOM’s Om Malik points out: “In order for web applications to match the desktop applications they seek to replace, these browsers need to start offering OS-like functionality. … Google’s Chrome browser embodies such an approach.”
• Managed services: If businesses shift away from operating systems, specifically Windows, the solution providers that deliver services to operating systems will also have to adapt. That’s the argument made by MSPmentor, who says that managed service providers should consider supporting Google Chrome, Apps and Android — three offerings “that could change the rules of corporate servers, desktops and mobile devices.”

Of course, there’s still a lot of uncertainty around Chrome. Users have complained that it lacks the add-ons and extensions that have made Firefox so popular. There are privacy concerns. And for some reason, on my home PC, every time I try to load a new page, I get an error message that says “aw, snap!”

(On a side note, could they have picked a more outdated saying for a “hip” error message? Did they also consider “whoop, there it isn’t!” and “Homey don’t play that!”?)

Still, the potential of Chrome is real. And for solution providers who figure out how to harness that potential, there could be a tremendous upside.

The incentives are thought to be less than the 10% fee Microsoft offers partners for bringing customers into the Microsoft-hosted CRM Online but would at least indicate that Microsoft plans to cut partners in on the action.

BPOS is Microsoft’s SMB analogy to the hosted services it has already brought to large companies including Energizer Holdings LLC.

Another big question is whether Microsoft will finally address the big hosted ERP question. As in, will Microsoft host ERP itself anytime in the near future? The company has gone back and forth on that one for some time.

Early returns from some partners converging on Houston. First, one longtime Microsoft partner was very gruntled (is that a word? If not it should be) about the company’s choice of venue. “How do you show your partners love? Drag them to Houston after the fourth of July weekend,” he said.

Here’s another unintended message: Flipping around the hotel TV, one channel has played nothing but a “Windows 98 is shutting down” splash screen for a day now. Things could be worse: It could be Vista.