A major shift in the way technical support is being sold by both vendors and solution providers is driving increased adoption of managed network services that are being bundled with the sale of a product or solution more often. Rather than offering simple break-fix support contracts, vendors such as Cisco are more aggressively attaching outsourced managed service contracts to product sales, a practice highlighted in a new report from Technology Business Research (TBR). The report also notes that global systems integrators are pursuing a similar strategy by attaching multi-year managed services contracts to solutions that are typically based on technologies from multiple vendors. Reselling products vs. reselling solutions In both cases, it’s clear there is now a concerted effort to pick up higher margin managed services revenue at the point of sale of the product or solution. For IT services firms that don’t actually sell products, the implications of those moves are profou...