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“Understanding
client business needs, and how technology and human resources
can be applied to those needs” |
Convergence and Managed Services
Convergence of IT and Telecommunications has resulted
in a boom in managed services. According to research analyst Frost
& Sullivan, the total Asia Pacific managed services market
was USD 769 million in 2004, with about 100 service providers
in the segment. This managed services market is expected to grow
at a CAGR of 10.5 percent from 2004 to 2011, to potential revenues
of about USD 2.3 billion by 2011. This is an astounding growth
rate for a market segment virtually unheard of several years ago.
Loosely defined as network applications or services that are hosted
and administered by a service provider – as opposed to on-site
implementation by the organization using the applications or services
– managed services are taking Asia Pacific by storm.
Although any organization can enjoy the benefits
of moving to a hosted model, small- to medium-sized businesses
tend to be the best candidates for adopting managed services because
of the considerable total cost of ownership of advanced IP services.
Expertise through specialization is a key factor
in the uptake of managed services in Asia Pacific. Because it
is expensive (and essentially prohibitively so) to maintain an
internal specialised team dedicated to each category of advanced
IP service, organizations may prefer to let their service provider
train and manage professional specialists for this task.
Managed services are “win-win.” The
end customer wins because it enjoys specialized and reliable advanced
network services that it does not have to implement or manage,
whereas the service provider wins because it not only is meeting
a market demand, it is also doing so with high customer loyalty
and retention since managed services usually involve service provider
staff with key customer IT personnel in close working relationships.
On IT and Telecommunications Convergence
Convergence means that business
solutions are no longer driven from an understanding or evaluation
of IT alone, clients must understand both IT and Telecommunications.
The growing flexibility Telecommunications can lend
to an IT solution and vice versa. The various options available
to clients today from both disciplines is staggering, with clients
expereincing increasing difficulty in understand whether they
receive value for money.
BITTS provides this understanding by focusing on
the client’s requirements, at first instance, then working
with the client to choose and implement the best technology option.
It does this by conducting audits (including billing
audits), developing with the client business cases to justify
change, business planning, transition planning, and applying professional
program management for solution implementation.
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