Last April, I participated in Dells Managed Services launch for SMBs. At the event, Dell had a couple of customers on hand who were both very satisfied with the service. Later in the year, Dell asked my colleague, Sanjeev Aggarwal, and I to conduct a Dell-sponsored research study to learn more about how Dell Managed Services was working out for a broader group of early customers. This project was very interesting one for me because Ive been looking at how managed services and cloud computing can benefit SMBs for quite some time.

Dell's goal for this study was to get a better understanding of why SMBs are turning to managed services and why they chose Dell. Most importantly, Dell also wanted to quantify time, cost and productivity benefits that customers are realizing from using Dell Managed Services. For the research, we conducted both in-depth one-on-one interviews with Dell Managed Services customers, and we also fielded a web-based survey.

Next week, on February 25, Ill share with you the key highlights about what we learned in our research during a webcast, How to Solve Your IT Management Dilemma. During the webcast, I'll discuss key study findings, including:

• The business and IT demands that small and medium businesses are facing.
• Why they are turning to managed services.
• The measurable results that customers are getting from Dell Managed Services in terms of time and cost savings, and productivity gains.

For example, on average, respondents' annual downtime decreased by more than 50% after deploying Dell Managed Services, and 89% say the service is freeing up time so that they concentrate resources on more strategic business requirements.

The webcast which will also feature Tom Myers, President, The Myers Group, Inc., one of Dell's Managed Services customers, talking about his first-hand experience with the service. Jim Roth, Director, Dell Small and Medium Business Services, will provide participants with links to the two research papers that document the findings in detail.

By the way, in my post last year about the service, I also suggested that Dell should come up with something a bit less clunky than "ProManage Managed Services" as the name of this solution—and I'm happy to report that they've done this. Based on results from this study, it also looks like Dell Managed Services is helping to lift the IT maintenance and management burden off SMBs' shoulders, giving them more time to focus on running their businesses.