At first glance, you may scratch your head and wonder why anyone would pose the question of whether analysts understand the managed service provider marketplace. Of course they do, you'd say. That's what they are paid to do is research and analyze.
The problem is, I don't think that's happening. In fact, I would wager that most analyst and research firms who have done any studies of the managed services (including cloud computing) landscape probably have a very superficial understanding of our profession. Let's take a closer look.
The Reluctant Analyst
Years ago, many analysts were predicting the failure of the managed services profession. Or, at least they were forecasting the massive consolidation of the MSP community down to a small handful of very large MSPs. Obviously this didn't happen. In fact, the research firm that made that dreadful prediction is no longer in business.
The truth is most analysts were reluctant to embrace or even acknowledge managed services for a long time. For me, as a representative of a very large and rapidly growing community, this is troubling. For a large number of analysts to ignore or at least not take time to understand our profession is inexcusable.
Better late than never, you might say? True, but the inescapable fact is that most analysts today are playing catch up. They do not fully comprehend the magnitude of the managed services market and their attempts at market size and MSP operational studies are still very immature.
At least get the basics right
What really harms the credibility of these analysts is when they make facile and unimpressive statements about the MSP community, concepts that have been discussed and settled long ago. For example, analysts used to confuse the issue of outsourcing (in general) with the more precise notion of remote IT managed services, which is the most common example of managed services today.
Additionally, when the analysts have widely varying forecasts of IT managed services spending, it tells me something isn't right. Even within the US market, there have never been any real consensus on MSP spending and I doubt there ever will be. The definitions being used are just too varied to ever have a consistent notion of where spending is in our industry.
