The managed services sector in Europe continues to exhibit strong growth, but performance by country presents a patchy picture with significant markets such as Spain and Italy actually showing a decline, according to a new report, Managed Service Providers in Europe – the top 500, published by IT Europa today.
Overall, managed services revenues in Europe rose by 3.5% between 2013 and 2014, says the IT Europa report, though this masks rapid growth in the Nordics, France and Germany and shrinkage in Spain and Portugal. Total revenues for all companies in the report total $294.28 billion (€262.78 billion) and total staff number is 1.4 million, although again there are major differences. Most are employed in the UK, France, Germany and Italy.
Critically, Europe is not one market for managed services provision, as the IT Europa report finds; there are major variations in the scale of its use in each country and region; the report shows that the national telecoms providers still have a major advantage when it comes to provision. The fastest growing part of Europe for managed services is the east, but from a very small base; Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria saw the biggest growth in turnover among managed services businesses last year. Some of these countries have very small scale managed services industries so far. Russia also has a tiny managed services provision.
The big players among managed services in Europe reflect the global position, with IBM Global Services, Accenture and Capgemini in the top ten, but there are also national powerhouses such as T-Systems International GmbH, BT Global Services, Telecom Italia, Alcatel Lucent and Nokia Solutions and Networks. This shows that the comms incumbency is still a strong factor, and that managed services is still being built on the back of telco provision.
The trends and opportunities in the Managed Services marketplace as well as some of the challenges it faces in accelerating adoption will be a major focus at the Managed Services & Hosting Summit 2015, the UK’s leading managed services event for the channel.
This executive-level event will be exploring the business opportunities for MSPs, Systems Integrators and Resellers in the delivery of Managed Services and Hosting and will take place on 17th September 2015 at 155 Bishopsgate, London. For further information visit: www.mshsummit.com/index.php