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Earlier this week, Level Platforms released the latest version of its flagship product, Managed Workplace 2011 R3, which includes support for managing printing and imaging devices, endpoint power settings and cloud-based applications such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps.

The message behind Managed Workplace has been printers, or more specifically the opportunity in managed print services (MPS). This service offering has been the wave of the future in managed services for at least the last five years. This year, printer and managed services vendors have turned up the volume, promoting MPS as big profit opportunity for managed service providers.

Perhaps there’s something more here. Perhaps the features in Managed Workplace reflect a different trend in how remote monitoring and management (RMM) vendors such as Level Platforms, Kaseya, N-able and LabTech Software are morphing into business control panels.

First, Level Platforms and managed print.

Level Platforms has done right by this trend. The MPS support in Managed Workplace enables its users to monitor and manage printing and imaging devices, remotely resolve performance issues, proactively anticipate maintenance issues and regulate consumable (paper, toner) expenses. The revenue opportunity comes from “just-in-time” replenishment of consumables and a per-page print expense model.

Printer vendors – particularly those with photocopier legacies such as Xerox and Ricoh – have been pushing the per-page expense model for years. Copier dealers know this model well, as that’s how they’ve always charged for their devices. Every time a user hits the green button on a copier, pennies fall into the pocket of a dealer. Vendors want the same thing with desktop and networked printers because these devices have been steadily robbing workload from copiers.

As evidence of the managed print opportunity, Level Platforms included a quote from a partner in its Managed Workplace announcement praising the MPS model and opportunity.

“After integrating our managed print service into our technology solutions portfolio, we began to see a return on investment of over 25 percent month to month,” said James Laszko, chief technology officer of Mythos Technology, an MSP based in Temecula, Calif. “We are very excited to see managed print integration in Managed Workplace R3 which will give us the ability to leverage Managed Workplace for even greater efficiency and profitability.”

Laszko isn’t alone. Many solution providers who have adopted managed print swear by its profitability. The problem is few solution providers have adopted the MPS model, despite the inclusion of MPS features in many RMM software packages and programs offered by printer vendors. In fact, most MPS partners Channelnomics has spoke with have treated the service as opportunistic and not strategic.

Level Platforms’ adding managed print support to Managed Workplace appears more like vendors pushing the MPS agenda on a consistently resistant and reluctant channel constituency.

Now, the real story may be in the inclusion of power management and cloud application controls. If the new features added to Managed Workplace are taken in their totality, the Level RMM platform – as well as similar offerings – begin to look more like control panels and than managed services tools.

RMM vendors – Level Platforms among the most notable – have been adding application support. Level Platforms hosted a multi-city roadshow this year with the support of several software vendors (Symantec CA ArcServe, Microsoft, Panda Security) that started channeling their applications through the RMM tool.

The inclusion of support for Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps shows an increasing need to provide support and control over common cloud-based applications. Many vendors, including CA and IBM, are extending control to cloud resources through management applications. Eventually, these management capabilities will need to be centralized, and Level Platforms and other RMM tools appear to be the vanguard of that consolidation.

In this sense, Level Platforms is beginning to take on the flavor of a control panel – a label more closely associated with Web and hosting services. Through a control panel, users are able to administer and provision multiple applications. Rather than just reaching into devices to tinker with configurations, Level Platforms provides increasing amounts of control for network devices, applications and cloud resources.

Is managed print a part of this trend? Absolutely. Eventually manage print will catch on and gain widespread adoption among solution providers and end users. What may drag MPS to the fore isn’t the continued push for its adoption, but the parallel adoption of multilayer control systems that span the gamut of IT infrastructures and cloud resources.

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