Time to Go Back to the Home Office Market? (SOHO, part 2)

A fun – and very dated – book I’ve had for about twenty years is Microsoft’s old spoof book for kids: Mommy, Why is there a Server in the House? I put it on the shelf with books for my granddaughter, and she brought it to me the other day. Of course, the pictures were nice, but she had no interest in the story.

And neither did anyone else, apparently. Windows Home Server was not a resounding success. It was Microsoft’s attempt to take the SBS (Small Business Server) “all-in-one” technology approach into the home market just as hosted services were coming of age.

Lots of IT consultants and MSPs simply don’t serve home offices. As I mentioned in the last blog on this subject (https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2025/06/home-offices-largest-opportunity-hiding.html), home networks used to be low-end, used junk, and share with very outdated and insecure kids’ games. They were the lowest priority to their owners and to their IT consultants.

But today, working from home often means dedicated resources, good equipment, and commitment to keeping things secure. And that means that it also need remote monitoring and management. Hmmm. Sounds perfect for managed services!

 

Who Works from Home in 2025?

In some sense, everyone does. But some industries (e.g., retail, restaurants, transportation, and manufacturing) require folks on-site, even though the owners and managers might have great home offices.

See the tables and graphs cited below (1). The data show that the most frequent fully-remote workers are in

• Finance and Insurance
• Professional and Business Services
• Utilities

But, even better, is the market for those in hybrid work settings. They need both office support and home office support, and probably a way to keep them connected. Most frequent hybrid remote workers are in

• Finance and Insurance
• Professional and Business Services
• Arts and Entertainment
• Wholesale
• Real Estate

(Note that I’m not included IT folks in this as you can support your own stuff.)

 

In each of those industries, more than 35% or workers are in hybrid home office environments. Like the home office of twenty years ago, these environments are still complex. But unlike twenty years ago, they have a serious budget, far more complexity, and a strong need for security.

The “kids” part of the equation is actually a lot easier than it used to be. There are no four-year-olds putting DVDs in machines. They connect the Internet via the TV, tablets, and smart phones. Ms. Rachel and Elmo are safely behind secure firewalls somewhere in the cloud.

At the same time, there’s increased complexity from network cameras, connected doorbells, and thermostats with default security settings. Home networks need security at least as much as office networks. And they are constantly under attack from very well funded folks on the dark web.

In addition to all that, there are gamers and home audio and theater enthusiasts that bring another bundle of always-on, well-connected, and probably-insecure devices into the home network. More devices with more operating systems and more holes to plug.

 

The Opportunity

Obviously, you could “secure” this environment, although that might take some time. But first you need to scan it. 

How many networks are there? For example, my home office firewall serves up networks at both 5G and 2.4G with separate DHCP scopes and no bridging. So you can’t easily get to one from the other. But with the right tools and the right software, anything’s possible.

In my opinion, scanning, documenting, and securing the network is a billable job.

Some, but not all of it, needs to be backed up. Backups need to be tested.

Network monitoring is a good idea. Reports need to be generated.

Patches and updates need to be applied to everything, if possible.

And the word “secure” is in quotes because the best security in the world is good for about fifteen minutes. Things change. People plug things in. Software is downloaded to devices. So, security is a never-ending job. The only question is, how often do you need to be onsite or remote in to run updates?

If I were going to build a recurring revenue model for a SOHO market, I would probably not be in the software game. In 2011, Marc Andreessen said, “Software is eating the world.” I think today he’d say that cloud services are eating the world.

I would not try to help home offices buy one license of MS Office and one license of QuickBooks. I’d let them pay me $175/hour to sit with them and help them buy the right thing. Then I would charge them to set it all up securely, and document it.

(Exception: If this is a business client with a contract at their big office, then I’d sell and deploy what they need for the home office as part of that contract.)

And then I’d create a recurring revenue program to monitor, patch, fix, and update all those operating systems and all the software. Everything needs to be under warranty or a service contract. But we’ll make sure all the updates are happening, and we’ll fix things when they break.

As always, managed service covers maintenance of the operating system and software. It does not cover adds, moves, and changes. And it doesn’t cover hardware. The contract should definitely include backups and testing backups.

What does the labor look like? I haven’t dug too deep here, but I’m thinking that the three tiers are simply based on complexity and frequency. So maybe Silver is one visit per quarter; Gold is one visit every other month; and Platinum is one visit every month. Visits might be remote. In all cases, you’ll do some monitoring remotely.

Then the calculation is based on how long each visit is, which tasks are on the monthly maintenance checklist, and how much you charge per hour. Add an hour per quarter for average onsite labor and you’ll have a cost for annual support. Divide by twelve and round up.

Note: We recently started working with Fing Professional, and I would definitely add that to the mix. It works across multiple networks for a very affordable price. See note below.

 

Is It An Opportunity?

Is this really an opportunity? Quick math might say each client is in the range of $300-$700 per month. Is that worth your time? You have to decide. But remember that this market is made up of people who are professionals. Most of them are connected to some real office somewhere. If you shine at the home office, you have an in for the office office.

And these folks are probably not going to be in the same job forever. They’ll need help setting up their office again once they change employers and get a whole bunch of new equipment shipped to them. And that’s a possible introduction to another business.

There are probably no $5,000/month opportunities in the SOHO market. But they’re also not $300/year, which is about what you could expect when you were trying to hock a Home Server.

 

What do YOU think about the small office/home office opportunity in 2025?

Comments welcome.

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(1) See the table/graph here: https://backlinko.com/remote-work-stats, compiled from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, available here: https://wfhresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/WFHResearch_updates_September2024.pdf.

See, also, my recent post Home Offices: The Largest Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight.

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Note on Fing: This is not a sponsored post, but Fing is sponsoring some posts of my posts on social media.

I'm very happy to be working with Fing as they roll out their Fing Professional network monitoring service. Fing has been helping consultants monitor small offices and home networks for more than fifteen years. Now they offer a single dashboard across all client installs.

Many IT Professionals have used Fing to scan client and prospect networks. With Fing Professional, you now have an MSP-friendly dashboard for all your client networks – at a very affordable price.

That means you can manage multiple workspaces, invite collaborators, (giving them different roles such as admin, editor, viewer, contributor), and basically manage multiple networks all from a single dashboard.

Check them out at https://www.fing.com/msp/?utm_source=Influencer&utm_medium=socpost&utm_campaign=Karl_MSP&utm_id=Influencer_Karl.

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:-)