Managed services expand at rapid rate

by Mark Hall

February 27, 2001 —

Managed service providers (MSP) hit a market milestone, and several MSPs escalated their offerings last week as IT continues to use them to fill operational holes.

The MSP Association in Wakefield, Mass., said last week that it had signed its 100th member, up from only 19 when the industry group started eight months ago. Michael Coffield, the vendor association's president, said the business world's shift to an around-the-clock operational schedule has prompted IT managers to look for help from outsiders.

That was the case at GATX Capital Corp. in San Francisco. GATX, the financial services arm of a leasing company, last year signed Nuclio Corp. in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., to manage its Notes e-mail operations during off-hours as its business shifted to serve more global customers.

"I got a night shift for a fraction of what it would cost," said Brian Comnes, director of technology services at GATX.

Comnes added that with Nuclio, he has seen his Notes downtime drop from 80 hours a year to four.

"In the leasing business, delays in communications can have expensive consequences," he said, noting that holding up a plane's lease for a single day costs GATX $10,000 in airport parking fees alone.

Yet with more than 100 companies offering MSP services, it can be "difficult for IT to choose the right service," said Corey Ferengul, an analyst at Meta Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. He said this technology services market is young and mostly attractive to IT managers "comfortable with being early adopters."

"MSPs are destined to succeed because they are moving beyond monitoring Internet infrastructure and going all the way up to the desktop," said Lisa Perry, an analyst at Boston-based Aberdeen Group Inc.

SilverBack Technologies Inc. Vice President Skip MacAskill said his Billerica, Mass.-based MSP wants to move deeper into the enterprise. In that vein, SilverBack announced last week a series of new MSP services, including remote monitoring of Oracle database activities. It already offers Internet management programs.

Also last week, Nuclio introduced its Fusion Web Manager 2.0 with enhanced services. Those include customized views of a user's infrastructure as well as direct control of resources across the Web.

Computerworld