The global trend for operators to enter into Managed Services agreements with vendor partners continues to grow. Operators have realised the benefits in cost-efficiencies, faster go-to-market strategies, and partner expertise in product development and business transformation. The partnerships have been forged, the foundations laid, and Managed Services can be taken to a new dimension. With an increased focus on managing the customer experience, operators are judging the success of their MS partnerships by the impact on the end-user.

Operators have moved beyond the more traditional network outsourcing, to leverage partner expertise with software and services. BSS and OSS platforms are being transformed with Managed Service partners. Not only is this improving the customer experience, but operators are also seeing a reduction in the bottleneck to the quick launch of new services with a superior, and well managed BSS.

New opportunities are being realised with Managed M2M services as operators find more traction and new revenue sources in this complex market with an experienced partner.

Operators themselves are increasing their activities as Managed Services providers to the enterprise and demonstrating why their key attributes – sophisticated infrastructure, existing client knowledge, secure systems – make them the obvious choice for services to the enterprise.

Increasingly, opportunities are growing for operators as cloud enablers. Operators are maximising their ability to offer infrastructure flexibility, cost reduction and business performance optimisation. Delivering innovative solutions, they are solving the business challenges of enterprise customers with their cloud offering.

The 2012 Managed Services World Congress agenda reflects the transformation in Managed Services with key focus sessions on Services, the Cloud, and Customer Experience Management. Network outsourcing challenges remain key, primarily with the deployment of enhanced network technologies and the assessment of the viability of network sharing. These issues will be discussed in the Networks Session.

Together with the dedicated focus sessions, the speakers will share with delegates, best practise solutions to maximise the returns from the MS agreement both for operators and vendors. Defining a mutually beneficial partnership at contract stage and ensuring this is closely managed through measured and monitored SLAs will be detailed as the backbone to a strong managed services partnership going forward.