While the economy reports a local GDP growth of 4.8%, the growth in managed services is reportedly sitting at over 30% year on year.
The reason for this growth is that the small and medium enterprises no longer consider the risk of servicing their IT assets through a break-fix model as sustainable.
This is according to Kaseya Africa regional manager, Garth Hayward, who says: “They are now more aware than ever that they require their IT and mobile assets to be available 100% of the time.
“They have moved from the old break-fix model, whereby when the IT asset wasn't working, they would phone someone to come through and fix it, to a model through which they contract an IT managed service provider (MSP) to constantly ensure their IT assets are always up and running.
“Where in the past, IT service providers where measured on how long it took them to arrive at the customer's site and then repair the damage, now they are measured on the uptime against an agreed service level agreement of the customer's IT assets,” he says.
Hayward notes that businesses which have been polled report that they are far happier knowing that an IT service management provider isn't making money when their systems are down. They prefer to pay the monthly contract to ensure the managed service provider is being rewarded to guarantee the health and availability of their IT systems, he explains.
“At the end of the day, it is in the interests of the managed service provider to ensure systems are up and running as when they are not, he has to despatch a technician to site which costs him money.”
Hayward, who will next week host full-day executive forums for IT professionals in Johannesburg and Cape Town, says Kaseya's managed services solutions are seeing acceleration in the SME sector across the continent.
He says managed services and automated systems management tools have long been out of reach of the mid-market, so this sector tended to neglect crucial but mundane IT systems maintenance that are the foundations of ensuring the health of their IT assets.
“Studies found that the problem is some of these people never got around to the routine tasks - defrags, DNM [domain name system] refreshes, patches and so on,” says Hayward.
“But neglecting the basic health of your systems ends up costing you more in the long-term. With the help of our MSP partners in Africa, SMEs can now be assured the basic maintenance required through to more advanced services such as backup and disaster recovery can be included in their service level agreement.”
This translates into enhanced productivity and lower operating costs, as downtime is costing companies in Africa literally millions each year, Hayward points out.
Kaseya international CEO and chairman, Gerald Blackie, who will visit SA to address the Kaseya executive forums next week, is positive about Kaseya's progress in its first three years in the country.
He says: “I am excited to hear the great things that are happening in SA and, indeed, Africa as a whole, out of our offices in Johannesburg. I see nothing but great things ahead for managed services in Africa.”
Kaseya will host a full-day executive forum in Johannesburg and another in Cape Town next week to outline global IT systems management trends and introduce Kaseya's newest mobile and cloud solutions.
Attendance is free, but space is limited. Click here for more information or to reserve a place.
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