2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Report for Managed Network as a Service

Common Features

The common features for this market include:

• Support for customer endpoints beyond network and security that may include physical/virtual servers, storage, power, environmental systems, physical security, operational technology (OT) and IIOT.
• Formal continual service improvement programs for MNS customers.
• Networking and security architecture design services.
• Certifications, such as ITIL v3/v4, relevant OEM vendor and System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 certifications.
• Network and security product resale or as OEM sale offers.

Market Overview

All providers in the Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities for MNS globally support multiple LAN, WAN edge and security function vendors, servers, virtual machines, and microservices operations assurance and protection, whether focused on domain integration or work unit.

MNS are remotely delivered services from the provider’s NOC/SOC, with a separate disaster failover hot site as a minimum. The NOC personnel are commonly deployed at the physical NOC/SOC location and/or deployed regionally.

The providers in this market are traditional network service providers, SIs or pure-play MNS providers. The MNS market does not include network services (e.g., WAN transport services), or network/security products.

Three mission-critical capabilities are highly interdependent in the MNS market:

• Service delivery quality: Process efficiencies, data accuracy and integrated service management across the MNS solution.
• Network automation: High-performing FCR for automated incident resolution, leveraging AI/ML with automation orchestrations to deliver high-functioning troubleshooting automations.
• Customer experience: Near-real-time, configurable, automated updates and easily navigable portals that display key metrics performances for all services.

The MNS market is a volume operations business model, not a complex operations model that is prone to the challenges of managing high customization. Volume-based models focus on optimizing products and services in a relatively mature market (for example, LAN, WAN and security environments). Volume models deliver standardized services, undergirded by repeatable processes and tightly integrated tools with high degrees of automation, to achieve high-scale efficiencies, resulting in higher delivery quality and optimized costs. Provider differentiation comes in the form of consistently higher-performing cycle time metrics, improved service quality, and cost-effectiveness. This Magic Quadrant is focused on the volume operations MNS provider business model, not custom-managed NOC offers (see How to Choose the Correct Network Operations Model for Your Enterprise).

The MNS volume delivery model has been in place for many years. It has evolved from a complex operations delivery model, which is similar to today’s customized IT outsourcing agreement delivery models. Network and security technologies continue to evolve, and the software to manage these networks has improved substantially during the past 10 years.

However, some MNS providers are also IT outsourcers that operate both models and straddle the two markets. Specifically, MNS is highly standardized and scalable, whereas common IT outsourcing agreements are substantially customized for a specific enterprise. The customized models commonly have lower standardization for scale efficiencies, less predictable costs and more prevalence for labor-driven pricing models.

In cases where the provider’s operations delivery uses both models to serve customers, provider performance is often broadly impaired. Shared provider operations resources with high variabilities in standardization, automation and performance quality standards commonly demonstrate diminished value at a higher cost to buyers. This happens for both types of managed services in the market when providers share common resources across these two disparate delivery models, since the provider’s offerings, investments and focus collide.

The current network and security trends enabling the expansion of MNS provider support are:

• Increased AI capabilities incorporated into user experience, documentation and service queries.
• Fixed wireless access with multicarrier eSIM capability could become strong alternatives to fixed cable broadband access.
• New LEO satellite services are moving toward mainstream adoption, specifically those operating at nonlegacy altitude orbits.
• 5G private mobile network (PMN) and Wi-Fi 6 continue to gain traction. Many providers in this research support both of these technologies. Additionally, increased IoT and IIoT support is becoming more widespread among most MNS providers in this research.
• Microsegmentation implementation and operations support is growing within the MNS providers’ capabilities to implement and operate (via MNS). Implementations of this model are increasing in critical data infrastructures such as manufacturing, healthcare and utilities to restrict current exposures to east-west LAN traffic. (See 2024 Strategic Roadmap for SASE Convergence for more information.)
• Customer experience monitoring tools and approaches are expanding. There is a shift from the current datasets from tools’ analytics capabilities toward analyzing data and providing insights, leading to plans to achieve proactive monitoring across all user application sessions for anomaly detection. The goal is for MNS providers to capture live and real-time experience data, learn what’s normal (with higher frequency and fidelity than typically seen historically) and proactively avoid degradation or loss of service.
• The majority of providers continue to improve the breadth and depth of their security offerings while having enhanced alignment between MNS LAN/WAN and security. AI and ML continue to drive improvements across the breadth of MNS offers.