Techaisle Blog

My journey with Dell laptops began in 2009 when I purchased my first model, the Dell Latitude E4200. Over the years, I have had the pleasure of using a variety of Dell’s offerings, including models from their esteemed XPS line. Most recently, I used the Dell Latitude 9330, a laptop I admired for its impressive evolution and exceptional collaborative work capabilities. However, as we moved into the second half of 2023, I decided to upgrade to the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1, a decision further enhanced by adding the Dell APEX Managed Device Service. This combination has proven to be a powerful tool in my tech arsenal. The experience has been nothing short of delightful. Dell has up-leveled the design and the mobility of its Latitude laptop line of business for executives and mainstream professional users.

Dell’s ProSupport Plus is a service most are acquainted with. In March 2023, Dell introduced its APEX Managed Device Service subscription, designed to assist businesses in maintaining the security and currency of their devices. Dell APEX Managed Device Service is a monthly subscription service that provides comprehensive device management and support for Dell PCs. It is ideal for businesses that do not have the resources to manage their own IT infrastructure or want to free up resources for other strategic initiatives.

According to data from Techaisle, it is projected that the global IT expenditure of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will escalate to a staggering US$1.35 trillion by 2024. Furthermore, this spending is anticipated to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7%, extending through 2028. Cisco is making a significant push into the SMB market, a segment where it has enjoyed steady growth. In fiscal year 2023, which concluded in July, the SMB segment was Cisco’s top-performing customer category for a third consecutive year. Cisco sees this segment as a $25 billion addressable market opportunity, captured with mid to high-tier SMBs transitioning to cloud and SaaS solutions. Notably, about 20% of Cisco’s SMB business comes from new customers every year, underscoring this segment's critical role in expanding Cisco’s reach and reflecting on the growing demand for technology amongst SMBs.

Cisco’s go-to-market in the SMB segment is partner-led, catalyzed with continuous partner-focused programs, initiatives, and marketing investments to foster robust relationships. According to the latest research by Techaisle, a significant majority of SMBs, 87%, depend on their partners for technology solutions. Furthermore, these SMBs channel nearly 89% of their IT expenditure through these partners. Cisco is, therefore, continuously enhancing its engagement with partners, revamping its marketing strategies, and adapting to the changing needs of its customers. A vital part of this strategy is the focus on the new “Scale” go-to-market initiative, aligned to engaging SMB customers and Partners in this space, as unveiled at the company’s sales kickoff meeting in August. This model offers partners and customers enhanced sales and marketing support, ensuring that SMBs receive expert advice in crucial care-about areas such as cybersecurity or hybrid work.

The concept of “digital transformation” has become a staple in corporate discussions over the years. While some may write it off as a fad, many, particularly SMBs, understand its importance. For these businesses, digital transformation involves adopting digital technologies to streamline operations, improve customer relationships, and position themselves as agile and innovative entities in their respective fields. Techaisle data reveals that 71% of SMBs are investing in digital transformation, and 37% have a holistic digital strategy. SMBs, once perceived as technologically behind, are actively embracing cloud solutions to meet their IT requirements. These technologies have become crucial to their digital transformation journey, enabling them to automate various operational aspects and gain a competitive advantage through essential business process automation tools, orchestration, and integration or advanced offerings like custom AI and analytics applications hosted on cloud platforms.

A Techaisle SMB and Midmarket adoption trends study of over 5100 SMBs and midmarket firms found that managed services are a priority for 79% of SMBs and 97% of upper midmarket firms. Worldwide spending on managed services by SMBs and midmarket firms is estimated to reach US$104B in 2024. Data from the last five years also shows an increasing overlap between managed and cloud consulting services, with a growing need for cloud cost optimization, security and compliance, and cloud and storage optimization. In the final analysis, Techaisle expects strong growth for managed services as it directly supports critical business and IT needs.

The adoption of managed services is driven by several key factors. These include improving IT security and management processes, proactively identifying and fixing problems, reducing IT and business risks, and enhancing disaster recovery and business continuity readiness. However, the focus of demand for managed services is shifting from infrastructure management to areas such as core security and application management, business process automation, cloud management, analytics, AI, edge and observability management.

SMBs are increasingly dependent on information technology. Techaisle SMB (1-999 employees) survey found that 78% of small (1-99 employees) businesses and 97% of midmarket (100-999 employees) businesses consider technology to be “somewhat” or “very important” to their success, and 28% of small and 43% of midmarket firms report that they have become more dependent on technology over the past 12 months. These SMBs deal with an ever-expanding portfolio of increasingly-complex applications and platform technologies. At the same time, these firms are struggling to rein in IT-related expenditures, including staff-related costs. This combination of increased reliance on technology as a critical element of business success, burgeoning complexity, and cost constraint has created a ‘perfect storm’ for using managed services.

Building an effective managed services channel is a long and complex undertaking. On the positive side, many channel members participate in managed service delivery today, and longer-term trends indicate that a sizable proportion of the channel community will develop managed services specializations. There is also compelling evidence that buyers need and value managed services and that this need has been growing over the past five years and will continue to increase. However, the data also shows that channel firms need help transitioning from delivering some managed services to building viable businesses on a managed services model. To be successful, vendors will need to set objectives spanning the three-year period over which the managed services specialization will emerge and invest in the tactics (and execution excellence) required to support partners through this period.