An Approach to Offering Profitable Managed Network Services

The market for managed network services is large and growing. The worldwide market for managed services in 2020 was $52 billion and is expected to grow to $71 billion in 2025. For managed service providers (MSP) to continue to grow revenue and profitability in this lucrative business it is critical that they continue to develop their managed services offerings to SMBs and enterprises.

SD-WAN has become a popular managed service over the last five years. However, not all customers’ or enterprises’ sites need all capabilities of SD-WAN. To address this gap in the market Juniper Networks SSN solution has developed a Flexible Service Edge (FSE) offering consisting of three options: Layer 3 Network Interface Device, Services Edge Router, and Session Smart Router. The FSE licensing options use the same hardware and software at each site. Therefore, service capabilities can easily be upgraded without hardware replacements or software upgrades. ACG Research has created a business model that shows positive cumulative cash flows over 5 years, payback of between 2−3 months and return on investment (ROI) up to 426% for these service offers.

By offering a full range of managed services from L3NID to session-aware SD-WAN, managed service providers can increase their total addressable market and also create an opportunity to upsell customers who initially opted for lower-end services to higher-end services. The key to the great financial results are
unique features of Juniper’s Session Smart Networking.

• Application and session aware monitoring for managed circuits.

• Flexible licensing and upgrades: Single product with multiple functions easily upgraded with no forklifts on hardware

• Tunnel Free SD-WAN

• Secure Vector Routing

This paper provides an overview of the opportunities for managed services, the Juniper FSE solution for services, and a detailed business case analysis.

‍