Abstract for Managed Services 

The rapidly growing managed services market is one of the bright spots in the IT industry. Approximately 35 percent of the infrastructure is operated by a third party provider as a managed service offering. This rapid evolution has forced managed service providers to turn to their vendors for advice and assistance in evaluating equipment features, specifications, and services; understanding the drivers and direction of the market; planning and designing new services; and selling into the competitive market. To address the specific requirements of managed service programs (MSPs) offered by service providers, network equipment vendors have enhanced their partner programs.   

To determine which partner programs differentiate and deliver best practices, Synergy ACG surveyed global telecommunications companies regarding their experiences with partner enablement programs from leading networking equipment vendors. Synergy ACG asked 119 decision makers to rank the partner enablement programs of the following companies: Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Brocade (Foundry), Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Huawei, Juniper Networks, and Siemens. This report delivers a comparative analysis of vendors’ programs and the results and insights from Synergy ACG’s survey of MSPs’ attitudes about these programs. 

Table of Contents

Equipment Vendors’ Partner Programs.

Managed Network Services Segments and Size.

Economic and Technology Drivers.

Methodology.

Primary Research.

Web Presence.

Vendors Evaluated.

Analysis and Key Findings.

Results by Service Planning, Service Creation, and Sales and Marketing Functions.

Analysis of Web Presence.

Vendor Results and Discussion..

Alcatel-Lucent

Avaya.

Cisco.

Ericsson.

Extreme.

Huawei

Juniper

Siemens-Enterprise Communications.

Conclusions.

Appendix A. Questionnaire.

Appendix B. Results.

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