Launching in June 2007, Latisys has previously purchased companies in Irvine, Calif., Denver, and Oakbrook, Ill. The latest acquisition is Pryme Technologies in Ashburn, Va. Latisys says it will convert Pryme’s business into a 123,000 square foot data center campus.

Latisys did business in the government sector prior to the Pryme acquisition. It didn’t inherit any government customers from that purchase, however.

A spokesman for Latisys said the company anticipates the suburban Washington facility will be able to address federal government requirements. He said the newly acquired square footage provides the space to meet current demands and future needs; the company expects significant growth in the D.C. market.

Latisys isn’t alone in that respect. A number of companies are expanding data centers and service offerings in the capital region. In 2009, Carpathia Hosting debuted a line of managed hosting solutions for federal agencies and rolled out a business unit of government customers.

The federal interest in cloud computing is one factor attracting managed hosting firms and companies with cloud offerings — Microsoft and Google among them.

Federal systems integrators, meanwhile, also offer managed services — as is the case with CGI and CSC.

While that seems like quite a roster of companies, the government often establishes  multiple-award contract vehicles. Such programs let a number of contractors compete for task orders, which are essentially mini-competitions within the framework of the contract vehicle. While a share of a multiple-award deal is no guarantee of big bucks, it’s at least a foot in the door.

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First, a little background. During a range of recent partner events, a few MSP industry veterans have asked me to start “writing” the history of the managed services market in my free time. (Free time?) More to the point: If such a book was ever published, those industry veterans have asked me to include a chapter on Mark Scott, president and founder of The Utility Company. Scott also was co-founder of N-able.

Alas, many of us in the media (myself included) joined the managed services story a bit late. I was busy moderating CIO roundtables and conferences over at Ziff Davis, while Scott and other pundits were pioneering the managed services market. At some point, I’ll catch up soon with Scott and gather some more of the back-story. I doubt I’ll write a book… but perhaps there’s a blog series waiting to come together.

Today’s News

Fast forward to the present, and Scott is busy building the Utility Company. The company’s pitch goes something like this:

“The Utility Company is a leading provider of virtual IT service and support for small and medium-sized businesses, delivering the required hardware, software and service for a monthly fixed fee per user.  Our Connected Office service program provides a single point of contact to deliver and manage technology, communications and vertical line of business applications –- 95% Remote; 100% Proactive.

In order to scale the business, the Utility Company works with a range MSPs. Looking ahead, the $1 million in funding will be “utilized for sales and marketing of the company’s Connected Office (CO) service portfolio, including the upcoming CO Enterprise Program for the mid-market and the new Utility Preferred Supplier Program,” according to a prepared statement.

Moving Upstream

Re-read that last paragraph again. The mid-market enterprise program represents a growing trend in the managed services market, where software providers are pushing beyond their small business heritage to engage midsize customers.

I concede: I need to dig deeper to see how The Utility Company’s existing SMB services are performing. But during the conversation, perhaps I’ll begin to rewind a bit with Scott to talk about the earlier days of managed services.

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First, let’s take a closer look at the user benefits. By utilizing push notifications on mobile applications instead of background application processes, users can minimize the network footprint for each device. In layman’s terms, these notifications run lean because the server does all the heavy lifting. A user won’t drain the battery on a mobile device by logging in and out all day. In addition, push notifications relieve some of the bandwidth overcrowding as carriers scramble to keep up with demand.

There’s been a lot of buzz about push notifications during the past week. HyperOffice announced beta testing for its push messaging service (HyperSync) across a variety of smartphone platforms including the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. On the same day, Urban Airship, who has been very successful on iPhone, announced that its push notifications application is now functional for BlackBerry and will soon be for the Android as well.

If this market were to expand to the reseller space, it would help solve the question of whether smaller MSPs should delve into the mobile arena. As consumers become more dependent on mobile devices for everyday business functions, small business on the whole will soon follow suit.

All in all, the ongoing development of mobile services will make offering these as part of a comprehensive managed plan an imperative—maybe not this year, but soon. Sure there are big players like Orange in the game, but don’t let that be a deterrent. There is a good share of profit-making potential by adding mobile managed services to your portfolio. If your clients aren’t utilizing mobile data yet, all trends predict that they soon will be.

Eric Webster is VP of sales and marketing for Intronis. Find Intronis partner program information here. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of MSPmentor’s 2010 Platinum sponsorship. Read all of Eric’s guest blog entries here.

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It’s true: cloud computing pioneer and market leader Amazon Web Services, along with SaaS provider SuccessFactors, are expected to be among the first wave of Cloud Secure customers, McAfee says. What they get from the deal is the ability to reassure their customers that their security meets the highest standards, McAfee claims.

What does leveraging Cloud Secure actually entail? For starters, McAfee will perform an annual systems audit and advise you on the security standards you should adopt now — and how to futureproof against emerging standards. In between full checkups, McAfee will perform automatic daily audits and, in the event of a problem, report back advise on remediation.

Finally, if they pass all of the above, vendors can slap the McAfee “SECURE” name all over their product and marketing.

McAfee isn’t alone with its online security branding efforts. CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association) promotes the Security Trustmark to IT vendors, solutions providers and end-customers. Similarly, VeriSign in February 2010 launched the VeriSign Trust Seal to help Web sites give visitors peace of mind.

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According to the press release, the main difference between IMHS and the new platform is simple — beyond an all new platform, the new Hosted Email Security offers enhanced malware and spam protection while increasing reliability to a promised 100% uptime.

Trend Micro Managed Email Security is going to come in two flavors: one that includes the full SLA, with inbound, outbound, and content filtering services, including spam blocking settings and rules, and one that does nothing but the inbound filtering. The former will cost $40 per user; the latter $32.

Apprently, the usual benefits of software as a service (SaaS) still apply. Trend Micro claims Managed Email Security is scalable, requires absolutely no intervention from IT staff, and it’s constantly updated with new threat information with no action required by the user.

There’s a lot of competition in the managed security arena. But we’ll be watching to see how Trend Micro differentiates.

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First, the quick details: Under the proposed agreement, ASX-listed telecommunications integrator, Hostech (ASX: HTC), will buy Anittel, Accord Technologies, Axxis Technology and Aspirence. According to Australia Reseller News:

• Hostech will pay $6.9 million in cash, along with $6.75m in shares. It will also take on $3.4m in convertible note debt.
• According to an ASX statement, Anittel, Axxis, Accord and Aspirence will generate $60 million in combined top-line revenue.
• The roll-up involves 270 staff in 15 locations.

Now, my interview with Brewer, who offers additional details about the roll-up strategy:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The discussion covers:

• 0:00: Introduction
• 0:15: Tim Brewer’s role at Accord Technologies
• 0:42: The roll-up strategy: About the five Australia MSPs forming a national MSP
• 1:45: The bigger strategy: The convergence of IT, voice and SMBs
• 2:40: How will the combined companies be branded?
• 3:05: Can the five-company combination really work?
• 3:55: Synergies at the strategy and cultural level
• 4:15: Getting more information
• 4:46: Conclusion

Another Name to Know

I trade email regularly with Brewer, and have offers timely insights into the Australia managed services market. Frequent MSPmentor readers may also recognize another company and executive involved in this deal: Axxis Technology’s Mathew Dickerson.

Dickerson wrote SLAM (Service Level Agreement Model), a well-known book that helps MSPs to better manage their customer engagements.

Australia Land Grab

Hostech isn’t the only company making moves in the Australia managed services market. In recent months, most of the major US-based PSA (professional services automation) and RMM (remote monitoring and management) software providers have hosted events or user group meetings in Australia. Also, Kaseya launched a SaaS partnership with Ingram Micro Australia — a move that seeks to give resellers and VARs a springboard into the manged services market.

We’ll be watching to see how each of the moves play out.

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For starters, the dozen MSPs below — all located in South Africa — are ranked in terms of their recurring annual revenue. (As part of the MSPmentor 100 survey process, we promised participants that we would not disclose actual revenue figures.)

Trends Worth Nothing

When MSPmentor took a closer look at the companies above, we noticed the following:

• The number of seats/devices each company was remotely managing ranged from 100 to 4500; the average was 1244.
• Five of the 12 companies more than doubled their managed services revenue in 2009 vs. 2008; three of the 12 companies more than tripled their managed services revenue in 2009 vs. 2008.
• The majority of companies are using a mix of professional services automation (PSA) and remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools — similar to what we’re seeing in other geographies.

We’ll be sure to check in with the dozen companies above throughout 2010, in an attempt to more closely track managed services trends in South Africa.

On a side note: A tip of my hat to Garth Hayward, Kaseya’s regional manager for Africa, for helping to alert readers about the MSPmentor 100 survey. Hayward had asked me to pull together some analysis for his region. But frankly, I wouldn’t have had the data points above without his efforts.

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Among the latest jobs listed in the Career Center:

• NOC Manager, South Africa
• Sales Manager, New York City
• The MSP Executive seeking employment opportunities
• And dozens more

We’re not out to compete with Monster.com or Dice.com. But we do want you to take advantage of the free MSPmentor Career Center. Got a position you’re trying to fill? Post it. See a position that interests you? Follow up.

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GigaOM has the full scoop from Boyd’s keynote, but the general gist is this: by confusing and obfuscating privacy settings, Buzz totally alienated its users by finding the social media equivalent of the “uncanny valley” that keeps people from fully accepting a lifelike CGI human as real. Which is to say, Buzz’s users were never quite sure where their public information began and their private information stopped.

Moreover, Boyd notes that Google made a misstep in making the traditionally-private Gmail experience the launchpad for the very public Buzz experiment. As she notes, the best solution from a coding and development standpoint isn’t always the best solution for real life.

Boyd also took Google and Facebook both to task for indexing, aggregating, and using customer data in ways they never intended – if a user has to opt-out of making their personal information more public than public, they’re endangering the safety and security of their users.

So what can MSPs take from all this? Simple. Everything from Google Apps all the way to Microsoft Outlook 2010 supports or will support some kind of social networking. Just make sure that if you choose to leverage those options, you make sure your end users are comfortable not only with the technology, but with the information they’re throwing out there.

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During my conversation with Gode, there was one phrase that kept coming up: “strategic imperative.” As in, while Azaleos generally prefers to deploy managed on-premises messaging and collaboration solutions, if a customer has a “strategic imperative” to get to the cloud, they’ll sell them a BPOS-type solution, either hosted with Microsoft or else deployed as a “hybrid” on their own hardware.

That phrase caught my ear because of what it implies for the future of cloud services. As Gode explicated, there are a million reasons not to go with BPOS, including an unfavorable lack of feature parity with on-premises SharePoint and all the usual security and reliability concerns that come with software as a service (SaaS).

But I think that only selling customers a cloud service if they’re already looking for one is telling about how the industry currently sees SaaS. The potential cost and TCO savings of cloud-based hosted services are still overshadowed by those other concerns.

That said, Azaleos tends to do business with 500 to 1000+ seat enterprises, and while the scalability of SaaS would be a boon there, the reliability and feature concerns come alive in that kind of situation, and yes, BPOS might not be ready for prime-time in that situation.

Moreover, Azaleos is reporting brisk business in managed Microsoft Exchange deployments, especially as the new 2010 edition gains mindshare, so their strategic acumen can’t much be argued.

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