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While even the leading managed print services vendors’ programs have so far fallen short of expectations, IDC’s MarketScape report for Worldwide Managed Print Services 2011 shows positive strides toward growth for MPS vendors and those solution providers best poised to capitalize.

IDC’s analysis finds Xerox at the top with high scores for technology partnerships and consistent global delivery that includes successful focus building out the company’s infrastructure for global support, including support for indirect channel partners.

Xerox’s support for small and mid-sized businesses is highlighted by IDC via this year’s launch of Xerox Partner Print Services, which includes training and mentoring along with business development, marketing, services, and support.

Other MPS vendors noted as market leaders in the IDC report are no surprise and include Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark. HP’s “comprehensive strategy to deliver a unified experience across the office, onsite production and external printing and imaging environments” was called out in the IDC report. Lexmark, meanwhile, was noted for its “global operational capabilities, industry-specific knowledge and expertise in streamlining business processes.”

Behind the annual research headlines lies the still-emerging story of vendors, partners and organizations—particularly SMBs—better collaborating to combine vertical expertise technology and tools that optimize enterprise-wide document workflow and output in core business processes, as well as enabling mobile mobile workers with an increasingly secure and sustainable printing infrastructure.

Elusive MPS market success and hesitation among the channel may be well served by some of the vendor bright spots and programs rolled out over the last year to hopefully bolster market numbers IDC has previously predicted will by 2014 hit $29.4 billion in the United States (up from $23.4 in 2009) and $42 billion globally (up from $31.7 billion in 2009).

Xerox expanded MPS this year with the acquisition of NewField IT to simplify the MPS assessment process and speed up implementation, and partnered with Cisco to integrate Xerox’s MPS and mobile print offerings into Cisco routers/switches to expand opportunity for the SMB market via Cisco’s channel partners.

Xerox also launched a new eConcierge service that provides partners with an online portal to make it easier for partners and customers to familiarize themselves with managed print and realize the benefits. This year also found Xerox debuting its free mobile print solution, signing a five-year MPS deal with British Airways and a sealing a partnership with Office Depot to offer MPS services in Europe.

HP earlier this year acquired Printelligent, an MPS provider, as a way to better target the SMB market by arming select channel partners with the ability to better scale their engagements.

The company’s growing portfolio and industry MPS solutions include HP ePrint, the Open Extensibility Platform and FutureSmart firmware—aimed at allowing organizations to update, manage and extend capabilities of multifunction printers and print while on the road.

IDC placed emphasis on HP’s “consultative approach to optimizing customers’ printing and document infrastructure and a particularly strong focus on vertical-specific, document-intensive workflows.”

Lexmark was singled out for its competency in developing sophisticated business process solutions. Lexmark’s global MPS offering are focused vertically on financial services, retail, public sector, healthcare, and eduction. The company reports that within the last 24 months it has won 23 new MPS contracts with Global 500 or Fortune 500 organizations.

Michael McCann, Xerox’s VP of field and sales operations for North American Resellers told Channelnomics earlier this year that in spite of successful strides and numbers, managed print remains more of an emerging opportunity than a mainstream service.

As technology and vertical business focus sharpens and expands, however, the low density of MPS providers need to keep pace with emerging and more complete solutions, including often overlooked revenue-generating sales of consumables such as ink, toner and paper, to compete in the future.

As McCann put it: “You’d better get in there to protect your customer base or someone else will.”