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The managed print services market competition gains more steam as Konica Minolta Business Solutions this week rolls out new managed IT and MPS programs and solutions across business sizes and strategic vertical markets. The sweeping programs reveal a company more deeply focused on the promise of MPS and eying competitive growth through its dealers and solution providers.

Konica Minolta is offering its dealers new managed IT and managed print services aimed at desktop management, e-mail security, and server and network monitoring. In a separate announcement at nearly the same time, the company unveiled new managed print solutions and services, dubbed Konica Minolta Envision IT, aimed at the education, legal and healthcare industries.

As part of the initial EnvisionIT offering, Konica Minolta will provide MPS, managed IT services and integrated solutions via its bizhub Extended Solution Technology (bEST) program, as well as professional services, hardware and support under one platform. bEST solutions are designed to enable interfacing between the company’s bizhub MFPs and software applications residing on a PC or server.

Both new programs feature prominently the managed services of All Covered, acquired by Konica Minolta early last year. As part of the new managed IT and MPS programs for dealers, for instance, All Covered is offering 24×7 client help-desk support focused on delivering managed IT services to small and mid-sized businesses.

The EnvisionIT solution line is part of Konica Minolta’s targeted focus on vertical markets through specially-tailored office solutions and services, said Sam Errigo, senior vice president of Business Intelligence Services, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. “Innovation and strategic partnerships are key elements of Konica Minolta’s dramatic expansion” into vertical markets, he said.

Meanwhile, for MPS dealers either in the enterprise market or looking to expand to enterprise accounts, a new collaborative development agreement with enterprise print management solution provider Pharos Systems International is behind a new technology platform for Konica Minolta’s Enterprise Optimized Print Services (OPS) dealer program.

Later this year, dealers participating in the enterprise program will offer Konica Minolta’s OPS on a national level. OPS leverages Pharos’ technology for enterprise-level MPS in environments ranging from the office to central reprographics departments and commercial printers.

Features and functionality are designed to provide visual global updates for monitored networked MFPs, printers, servers and routers that can be accessed from an iPad, tablet PC, or any web browser. Other new features include management reporting, applications reporting, end- user printing patterns and drag-and-drop floor planning tools.

Konica Minolta’s new programs are the latest addition to the still-emerging story of vendors, partners and organizations better collaborating to combine vertical expertise, technologies and tools that optimize enterprise-wide document workflow and output in core business processes – as well as enabling mobile workers with an increasingly secure and sustainable printing infrastructure.

As noted previously by Channelnomics, elusive MPS market success and hesitation among the channel could begin to turn a corner this year with the help of these types of partner-based growth solutions and programs being launched by Konica Minolta, Xerox, Oki Data, Hewlett-Packard and others.

Safe to say everyone positioned to capitalize on emerging MPS market opportunities is hoping these technologies, tools, partnerships and programs 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).