{"id":3173,"date":"2012-11-05T12:55:50","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T12:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theweekinimaging.com\/?p=3135"},"modified":"2012-11-05T12:55:50","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T12:55:50","slug":"commodities-exchange-if-managed-networked-services-are-a-commodity-wheres-the-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/feature-articles\/2012\/11\/commodities-exchange-if-managed-networked-services-are-a-commodity-wheres-the-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"Commodities Exchange: If Managed Networked Services is a Commodity Where\u2019s the Opportunity?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Tom Callinan<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the hottest trends sweeping the office technology industry is IT services, which also encompasses managed networked services (MNS). To be fair, they\u2019re related although they are not necessarily the same thing. Either way, not everybody sees these two related opportunities as the wave of the future for the office technology reseller looking to compete in a world with declining hardware opportunities and paper volumes are spiraling downward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIT services are the biggest distraction copier companies are embarking on today,\u201d says Tom Callinan of Strategy Development. \u201cMany [dealers] are boiling IT services down to managed networked services; if you want a commodity just look at managed networked services. Just Google prices for MNS and you\u2019ll see price lists online. There are 18,000 MNS providers out there, so it sounds great, practical revenue, high margin, and it\u2019s a good revenue stream for your own customers because they trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, and there\u2019s always a but in there someplace, when one looks at the big picture Callinan has his qualms. Besides emphasizing the number of players already in the space, he talks about how easy it is to enter the business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at market attractiveness one thing you look at is your ability to get into the market. Are there barriers to entry? There are zero barriers to entry for MNS, you outsource everything. You can go to one of these master MSPs (managed service providers) and buy the monitoring and buy the help desk. You and I can open up a MNS [operation] and send [client\u2019s] servers and desktops to an IP address at the master MSP, Level Platforms or wherever.\u201d<\/p>\n

What it comes down to in his opinion is that dealers are oversimplifying things and now jumping into a crowded pool.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like we try to oversimplify workflow as content management, we\u2019re oversimplifying IT Services as MNS,\u201d emphasizes Callinan. \u201cTrue IT Services would have workflow. Is that a good place to get into? Absolutely, but I\u2019d pick and choose. One of the big mistakes copier dealers are making today is talking about IT Services as if it hasn\u2019t existed before. There\u2019s a large group of people out there who have been selling it for the last 10, 20, 30 years. It\u2019s a $160-billion business worldwide, from IBM to two-man workshop VARs selling it. It\u2019s a highly competitive area. I\u2019d \u00a0pick what I\u2019m going to sell and if I were in the copier business I\u2019d pick workflow and anything that has to do with moving the paper process to digital.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the hottest trends sweeping the office technology industry is IT services, which also encompasses managed networked services (MNS). To be fair, they\u2019re related although they are not necessarily the same thing. Either way, not everybody sees these two related opportunities as the wave of the future for the office technology reseller looking to compete in a world with declining hardware opportunities and paper volumes are spiraling downward. \u201cIT services are the biggest distraction copier companies are embarking on today,\u201d says Tom Callinan of Strategy Development. \u201cMany [dealers] are boiling IT services down to managed networked services; if you want a commodity just look at managed networked services. Just Google prices for MNS and you\u2019ll see price lists online. There are 18,000 MNS providers out there, so it sounds great, practical revenue, high margin, and it\u2019s a good revenue stream for your own customers because they trust you.\u201d But, and there\u2019s always a but in there someplace, when one looks at the big picture Callinan has his qualms. Besides emphasizing the number of players already in the space, he talks about how easy it is to enter the business. \u201cWhen you look at market attractiveness one thing you look at is your ability to get into the market. Are there barriers to entry? There are zero barriers to entry for MNS, you outsource everything. You can go to one of these master MSPs (managed service providers) and buy the monitoring and buy the help desk. You and I can open up a MNS [operation] and send [client\u2019s] servers and desktops to an IP address at the master MSP, Level Platforms or wherever.\u201d What it comes down to in his opinion is that dealers are oversimplifying things and now jumping into a crowded pool. \u201cJust like we try to oversimplify workflow as content management, we\u2019re oversimplifying IT Services as MNS,\u201d emphasizes Callinan. \u201cTrue IT Services would have workflow. Is that a good place to get into? Absolutely, but I\u2019d pick and choose. One of the big mistakes copier dealers are making today is talking about IT Services as if it hasn\u2019t existed before. There\u2019s a large group of people out there who have been selling it for the last 10, 20, 30 years. It\u2019s a $160-billion business worldwide, from IBM to two-man workshop VARs selling it. It\u2019s a highly competitive area. I\u2019d \u00a0pick what I\u2019m going to sell and if I were in the copier business I\u2019d pick workflow and anything that has to do with moving the paper process to digital.\u201d  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82],"tags":[149,155,213,235,360],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}