IT service providers from the Netherlands see managed services as a growing market that currently needs to invest heavily in AI. However, MSPs only want to make those investments after they feel sufficiently familiar with AI, which requires further training.
Dutch IT service providers foresee a bright future for managed services. They expect 45 percent of revenue to come from this branch in 2024, compared with 32 percent in 2023. This rising expectation does not come out of nowhere but is a reflection of what is happening in the market. It shows that Dutch MSPs are evolving from project-based customer support to a service model that generates recurring revenue.
The most common items offered are cloud-based applications (SaaS: 20%), cloud-based infrastructure (IaaS: 18%), and enterprise applications (e.g., Salesforce: 16%). In the security branch, SOC, security awareness training, and zero-trust access ranked shared first place at 14%.
Challenges in AI and legislation
Furthermore, they feel pressure from the market to focus offerings more on AI. 64 percent of managed service providers (MSPs) feel the need to offer customers AI insights and tools. An additional problem is that nine in 10 say they need to do more training in the AI area.
Other areas MSPs struggle with are helping clients comply with laws and regulations (70%). In the Netherlands, for example, companies have many questions surrounding the implementation of NIS2. Certainly, the Dutch government’s delay in transposing the directive into law is causing a lot of additional uncertainty about the actual legislation and the implementation date.
These results come from a report by Barracuda that annually surveys the landscape of MSPs. Among the 700 participating organizations, 50 were from the Netherlands.