Enterprises have to do more with less in the current end-user computing (EUC) environment. They must deliver an endpoint experience that satisfies the hybrid workforce’s expectations for a seamless workflow while implementing enhanced security measures, regulatory compliance, and AI integration. These challenges go beyond traditional ones and add to the burden on IT staff, increasing competition for budget allocation among IT, operations, and AI initiatives. However, these challenges present considerable market opportunities for companies offering managed services. They can be an asset in helping enterprises better manage their EUC environment, freeing up resources to focus on other strategic tasks, such as improving data security.
Adding managed services to the EUC team
Managed services are gaining increased acceptance among enterprises that lack sufficient IT staff or specialists to handle day-to-day EUC management, hybrid cloud deployments, application security, and AI test projects, among other categories. Consequently, the global managed services market is projected to reach $444 billion by 2030, up from an estimated $303 billion in 2025.
Within this expanding market, Mordor Intelligence notes, “The managed services landscape is experiencing a fundamental shift as organizations increasingly prioritize digital transformation and operational excellence.” In line with these priorities, there is significant potential for revenue as managed services can become part of an enterprise’s EUC team to improve performance in operational efficiency, security and compliance, and productivity. Adding specialists to the IT teams can also help mitigate the skills gap.
Smoothing out the rough spots
EUC is a critical element in both successful digital transformation and the creation of a well-run organization. If it fails at the end-user locale, it disrupts development, product delivery, sales, customer satisfaction, ROI, and ultimately market share. To assess and implement improvements to EUC, managed services can provide comprehensive support, from strategic consulting, through infrastructure improvement design, to implementation and 24/7 operational management and support.
With these external EUC resources, enterprises can examine several key elements of EUC performance that can benefit from managed services, including:
- Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI): The hybrid workforce depends on VDI and virtual machines (VMs) as they work from various locations. They want whichever VDI solution their enterprise uses to provide efficient logon times and to guard against latency when powering up their laptops. Once powered up, they want their desired applications to load quickly and be equally responsive. Managed services can assist by conducting infrastructure and user experience monitoring to identify latency issues and flag them for remediation. It can also enhance application delivery with controllers and load balancing.
- Facilitating scale: Managed services can help enterprises take a holistic look at their EUC infrastructure, identifying under-utilized assets, devices cycling out, and where performance issues could hamper scaling up. If scaling down, managed services can determine whether under-utilized assets could be repurposed for productive use. Enterprises can also save on new investment scaling costs by outsourcing cloud services, for example, so they do not have to buy physical servers and other hardware and the talent to manage such resources. Since managed services providers have an extensive network of vendors and in-house IT talent, they can develop a future-facing plan that enables the enterprise to scale without adding staff and access competitive choices in tools and devices.
- Security and compliance: Data privacy concerns are motivating enterprises to enact SOC2 (Service Organization Control) compliance processes. Here, managed services can ensure successful compliance by providing 24/7 threat detection, incident response, and problem management, access controls, and auditing and reporting. Additionally, managed services can integrate end-user access controls into the security infrastructure, including Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access).
- Unifying EUC: To bring these EUC processes into a rational, organized operating environment requires centralized endpoint management of corporate and BYOD devices. Managed services can offer enterprises unified endpoint management (UEM) solutions that provide management, security and observability of all devices and data, whether in or outside a corporate network. Unified, central visibility can help guard against security risks like “shadow IT” when users bring unauthorized devices into the network. It can also defend against “shadow AI,” in which unsecured AI-generated data and applications may flow into the network.
EUC is a team sport
Looking ahead, as staffing and budget constraints continue, managed services present a solution for enterprises to enhance EUC operations while conserving spending on items like new hardware. IT administrators can add managed services specialists to their teams, ensuring they can deliver a secure and productive experience for today’s hybrid workforce. There is a significant upside: enterprises can reduce costs while improving operations. Managed services can generate recurring revenue by providing UEM, security, and compliance support 24/7. It’s a sound strategic path to consider.
