Managed print monitoring solutions company MPS Monitor generated 40 percent revenue growth in 2020 vs.2019, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic and slow growth elsewhere in the print solutions market.
MPS Monitor, based in Milan, Italy, develops remote monitoring and management (RMM) software for printer monitoring and feet management. The company did not disclose actual revenue or profit figures in euros for 2020. But the percentage growth figure may suggest ongoing opportunities for MSPs and hardware dealers that want to wrap managed services around multi-function printer (MFP) sales and leases.
MPS Growth in a Shrinking Hardware Market
Still, driving revenue in the printer market isn't easy. For instance, HP's annual printer revenue fell 12 percent to $17.6 billion in fiscal 2020, and Xerox's annual revenue fell 22.5 percent to $7 billion in 2020, according to financial reports from each company.
The printer market challenges arrived long before COVID-19 became a global pandemic. According to IBIS World research from October 2020, the printing industry's long-term struggles continued over the five years leading up to 2020 as digital products and services have increasingly displaced traditional printed materials.
Over the past two decades, rapid technological change has upended markets and sent the industry into structural decline as digital platforms, e-commerce and online documents proliferated, according to the research.
MPS Monitor Growth: More Details
Despite those challenges, MPS Monitor has leveraged cloud-based RMM software, partnerships and integrations to drive growth. Key alliances and integrations span HP, Microsoft, Okta and Asolvi, among others.
MPS Monitor 2.0, the company's flagship RMM software, enables the remote monitoring and management of printers and MFPs. The solution helps dealers and MPS resellers improve service levels and reduce costs, as well as to optimize dealer operations and improve overall service margins, MPS Monitor asserts.
In a prepared statement about MPS Monitor's growth, CEO Nicola De Blasi said:
“Due to the pandemic, last year was extraordinarily challenging from a health, social and economic perspective. This presented businesses with barriers and hurdles they had never encountered before, putting them and the print ecosystem under pressure to respond quickly to the rapidly changing business landscape. Our founding vision for MPS Monitor to be a cloud-native platform, proved to be correct; we had the right solution at the right time for our print dealer community as they worked with their clients to build new print models for the new world. IDC’s recent and positive Vendor Profile is an endorsement of our strategy, which sees us focused on accessibility, flexibility, security and industry partnerships in order to benefit the channel partners that we serve, both now and in the future.”
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
