MSPmentor Managed Services News & Blog

SMB Crisis Management: Address Smoke Before There’s Fire

Joe Panettieri — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:25:23 +0000

If I seem tired, it’s because my hotel had two false fire alarms last night. All of the hotel guests, including me, had to exit the hotel twice during the middle of the night. Exhausted parents. Tired kids. Burned out bloggers. The situation could have turned ugly. But the hotel addressed potential customer complaints before the sun rose that morning. Here’s how.

First, does this blog have any implications for MSPs? I believe so. Many of MSPmentor’s readers represent small businesses. And some of those MSPs will stumble badly during a business crisis — whether it’s a customer outage or a third-party cloud service going dark.

How to cope? Learn from the Omni Interlocken Resort near Denver, Colo. A few hundred VARs were at the Omni this week for the Avnet Technology Solutions Partner Summit. Early on July 27, all of us at the Omni awoke to blaring fire alarms and verbal broadcasts urging us to exit the hotel immediately. It was a false alarm. And it happened again an hour later.

Imagine the situation: Several hundred customers suffering from lack of sleep. Bloggers like me, armed with Twitter, ready to vent their frustrations. No doubt, scores of hotel guests were less than pleased. But hotel general manager David Jurcak addressed the situation before it went from bad to worse.

When I awoke the next morning I spotted a letter under my door. In it, Jurak:

Apologized for the false alarms;
thanked guests for their cooperation;
described hotel safety procedures;
indicated what triggered the false alarms; and
offered all guests complimentary coffee, bottled water and pastries in the hotel lobby.

Instead of facing an angry mob that morning, the Omni hotel won back the confidence of many guests.

I wonder: How many MSPs act as quickly and decisively when they let a customer down?

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Managed Services Branding: Can Rivals Counter Lenovo Servers?

Joe Panettieri — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:02:59 +0000

Lenovo continues to connect the dots between low-cost servers, remote management and MSPs. The latest example involves three new ThinkServers that start at under $900 but boast remote management capabilities for managed services providers (MSPs). We wonder: Will additional server vendors — like Dell and Hewlett-Packard — follow Lenovo’s MSP lead? Here are some predictions.

Let’s start with the news. Lenovo’s latest MSP-centric server efforts include the ThinkServer RD230, RD240 and TD230 servers.

The first two servers, Lenovo says, are rack systems that include:

Built in advanced RAID for advanced data protection on the RD230
Web-enabled remote management tools to enable managed service providers to remotely monitor and manage their clients’ IT systems
Hot swappable hard drive storage to eliminate downtime and give IT managers flexibility in assigning data to specific locations
A DVD writer for a convenient way to install new applications

Meanwhile, the ThinkServer TD230 tower server “gives managed solution providers and businesses the flexibility and performance they need to outfit nearly any work environment,” Lenovo claims.

In an interesting twist, Level Platforms certified the new servers for monitoring and management by their Managed Workplace solution.

Setting the MSP Server Pace

Lenovo is no stranger to the MSP market. The company spent 2009 studying the managed services sector, and Lenovo launched its first MSP-centric server in early 2010, as described in this FastChat video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Competition Coming?

Are Lenovo servers the best servers for MSPs? I have no idea. But I do know this: Lenovo is the only server maker, to the best of my knowledge, that’s branding its servers to specifically target MSPs serving SMBs. That’s smart.

Still, I suspect Lenovo won’t be alone for long. Frankly, I’m shocked Dell hasn’t made similar branding moves with its servers — especially since Dell has promoted managed services software for roughly three years.

And what about HP? I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more about their MSP server strategy in the months ahead. As you may recall, HP’s new channel chief is from Lenovo, and apparently he helped to develop Lenovo’s MSP server strategy.

I wonder what steps, if any, Lenovo will take to maintain its perceived MSP branding lead.

Additional reporting by David Courbanou. Sign up for MSPmentor’s weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. And follow us via RSS, Facebook, Identi.ca; and Twitter. Plus, check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com.

SEPATON Expands Sales Into Central Europe

Matthew Weinberger — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:00:46 +0000

Disk protection solution provider SEPATON has announced the expansion of sales operations into the Central European market, looking for reseller partners and enterprise customers alike. Here’s the scoop.

SEPATON, whose offerings we talked about in more depth earlier this year, is establishing a new regional office in Frankfurt, Germany. Serving as SEPATON Sales Director for Central Europe is Sun Microsystems veteran Rolf Lange, says the company’s press release.

In his new role, Lange will focus on recruiting partners to work closely with SEPATON’s own sales team in order to identify enterprises suffering under the load of massive physical tape libraries – and then provide them with their virtual tape library solutions with data deduplication.

The company already has customers like Symantec and McKinsey in Germany, but this announcement marks their formal entrance into the market.

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How to Choose a Managed Services Vendor

Sam Gutmann — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:39:38 +0000

As an IT service provider, choosing a vendor to partner with is a critical decision for your company and for your clients. There are many options available, but especially in the case of online backup, many are either flimsy consumer grade products or enterprise-level solutions that are too intensive and far exceed the budgets of your SMB clients.

Here are some guidelines to follow when looking for a profitable, cooperative partnership.

Security

The most elemental requirement managed service providers need to look for is security. If your clients’ solution isn’t secure, it renders all the other features and functionalities moot. Look for security certifications such as SAS 70, HIPAA, or other qualifications that satisfy Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.

Reseller-Focused

You need a managed services solution that is specifically for VARs, managed service providers, and other IT resellers. One way to gauge if your vendor is truly gung-ho about partnering is to evaluate their management tools.

It is critical that your solutions have detailed, organized reporting functionalities. For example, a management portal that allows you to not only manage your tools, but provide insights into your costs, profits, and client billing is critical to your experience with the software and can determine the success or failure of the solution as a whole.

Another critical element to look for is integrations with your remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional services automation (PSA) tools. Being able to incorporate any new services into your preexisting management tools just makes your entire management process smoother and less of a hassle.

White Labeling

The best way to ensure that a potential solution is profitable for your IT business is threefold: secure software, at a reasonable price, that you can sell. And it’s the sales component where your provider’s reseller program will have the most impact.

By offering a white label solution, your solution provider will allow you to make an impact on your bottom line right away. Some companies, such as Intronis, will format everything from the software, to an end-user website to marketing and sales collateral—all with your brand. A vendor who provides you with all the tools to resell their solution truly understands that their success is dependent on your success. These companies will make reselling their solution as easy as possible for MSPs.

Enablement

With some providers, the conversation ends as soon as they have your credit card number. Look for a reseller program that provides training and enablement sessions. That way, a managed service provider will not only have a better understanding of the software and how to sell it, but they will ramp up quickly and make a profit faster too.

Customer Support

Furthermore, if your solution provider is the proprietary software owner, your support is going to be more thorough and robust because they built the product from the ground up. They will truly understand their software’s functionality inside and out.

A critical component of your success with a solution is the robustness of your vendor’s support team. We have all called a customer service line only to get a person on the other end of the line who is on the other side of the world. Overseas support cannot compete with onsite, U.S.-based customer support that truly speaks your language. Any company that outsources such a key component of the customer experience is doing their partners a major disservice.

Be Critical

In short, investigate your options critically. Be sure that your provider fulfills the three core elements of secure and reliable software, easy-to-use management and reporting tools, and a top-notch reseller program from rebrandable software to training to U.S.-based support.

With those three components in place, the solution you choose will most likely help your IT business earn a tidy profit.

Sam Gutmann is president and CEO of 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. Find all of Sam’s guest blogs here.

NaviSite Bets On Oracle-Sun Managed Services

Joe Panettieri — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:06:28 +0000

Here’s some coincidental timing: Last night I noted that Oracle was preparing to take more steps with managed services providers. Fast forward to the present, and NaviSite says it’s embracing Oracle’s Sun servers for a range of managed services offerings. Here are some of the details.

NaviSite is a well-known managed hosting provider that has about 1,500 customers across 10 datacenters in the U.S. and United Kingdom. To build on those efforts, NaviSite is using Sun SPARC enterprise servers, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and a range of Oracle applications. NaviSite says it’s also using Sun x86 blade servers for virtualized application environments. Plus, Oracle E-business Suite Financials and a customer portal run on the the Oracle platform.

I realize: NaviSite is more of a managed hosting provider, and the company doesn’t really compete with smaller MSPs serving SMB customers. But NaviSite’s decision to leverage Oracle so heavily across its managed hosting and managed services practices caught my attention.

NaviSite claims:

“Using NaviSite’s managed application services, customers can reduce costs while delivering high service levels. Typically, customers benefit from at least a 20 percent cost reduction, higher application availability and 20 percent better application performance all while lowering IT costs — when compared to managing their applications internally or outsourcing to another provider.”

At the Avnet Technology Solutions Partner Summit in Colorado this week, Oracle is working overtime to get Sun partners trained on Oracle solutions. NaviSite sounds like it’s a true believer in that strategy.

Meanwhile, an Oracle spokesperson says Oracle’s on-demand solutions are also catching on with MSPs. And it’s safe to expect Oracle to soon promote Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (DVI) technology to MSP-type partners as well. My best guess is the Oracle VDI partner push will start around Oracle OpenWorld in September 2010 or so.

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Microsoft vs. Google: Battle for Government SaaS Supremacy

Matthew Weinberger — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:00:54 +0000

The launch of Google Apps for Government goes beyond just answering some lingering concerns about the cloud: it marks the birth of a new SaaS battleground between the search giant and their rivals at Microsoft. Here’s why.

Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite Federal (BPOS-F) is a cloud package designed to give the public sector Microsoft-hosted Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online, and Live Meeting. We covered BPOS-F’s capabilities in depth here when it launched earlier this year, but it’s intended to fill the same exact need as Google Apps for Government.

The difference, as All About Microsoft’s Mary Jo Foley notes, is that while BPOS-F sports a laundry list of supported federal compliance standards, it’s missing FISMA – the key to the entire Google Apps for Government sales pitch. It’s worth mentioning that Foley reports Microsoft is planning on adding that specific certification to their offering “very soon.”

Microsoft Online Services (which encompasses but isn’t limited to BPOS), says Foley, claimed more than 500 U.S. state and local governments as customers in February 2010.

Google’s got an uphill fight in front of them if they want to unseat Microsoft in the federal market. But one thing’s for sure: this is a battle that’s only getting started.

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Managed Services: Is Oracle a Surprise Player?

Joe Panettieri — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:20:17 +0000

Generally speaking, I don’t hear much about Oracle in the managed services market. But that could change over the next few months. At the Avnet Technology Solutions Partner Summit this week, Oracle is talking up Oracle Enterprise Manager — which offers a single dashboard for maintaining servers, middleware and applications. But that’s not all…

In a related step, Oracle is preparing to push deeper into the Vertical Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) market, MSPmentor has heard. It sounds like the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized partner program will soon include some VDI components.

The net result: Oracle Enterprise Manager ultimately will be able to manage VDI instances running in customer data centers, according to Nick Kritikos, VP of partner enablement at Oracle. Not by coincidence, Kritikos says a growing number of service providers and hosting providers use Oracle Enterprise Manager to proactively maintain customer environments.

I realize small VARs and small MSPs focus mostly on Microsoft-centric managed services — maintaining desktops, mobile devices and Wintel servers. But as you move into larger end-customer settings, MSPmentor is starting to see Cisco-centric MSPs emerge. I wonder if a similar but separate niche — involving Oracle-centric MSPs — will emerge.

No doubt, Oracle’s direct sales force worries some channel partners. Eager to address those concerns, Oracle is working overtime at the Avnet partner conference to describe how Sun partners can pursue roughly 130,000 Oracle customers in North America.

Will MSPs participate in that customer pursuit? I’m not sure. But Oracle Enterprise Manager has me intrigued. And I’m trying to learn more about Oracle’s VDI strategy.

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LabTech Launches Managed Services Conference

Joe Panettieri — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:09:27 +0000

LabTech Software is launching an Automation Nation conference for managed services providers and IT service companies. It’s an intriguing move, especially when you take a closer look at the event’s date and location. Here are the details.

LabTech specializes in remote monitoring and management (RMM) software. As you may recall, ConnectWise Capital invested in LabTech in early 2010. The move seems to have given LabTech a lift; MSPmentor has heard from multiple MSPs that either tested or deployed LabTech following the ConnectWise Capital investment.

And several MSPs suggest Kaseya introduced the so-called G1 platform as a pricing and product response to LabTech’s aggressively priced platform. However, Kaseya has publicly stated that G1 was designed for MSPs that don’t require a full-blown K2 platform (K2 is Kaseya’s modern, extendable platform).

New Conference

Next up, LabTech says it will host its first Automation Nation conference November 4 in Orlando, Florida. The conference will allow LabTech users to learn from one another while also sharing feedback with LabTech. At the same time, LabTech is expected to share its product roadmap at the event.

Now, take a closer look at that date and location. LabTech essentially plans to piggyback the ConnectWise IT Nation conference, which runs Nov. 4-6 at the same Orlando location. ConnectWise IT Nation is expected to attract roughly 1,000 attendees.

So who are the winners here? Existing and potential LabTech customers gain the opportunity to potentially double-dip, learning more about LabTech while potentially seeing the broader managed services market in action at the ConnectWise IT Nation conference. Also, ConnectWise customers can arrive a bit early to Orlando if they want to learn more about LabTech.

Meanwhile, ConnectWise will need to maintain a software partner balancing act, especially as third-party RMM partners attend the ConnectWise IT Nation conference.

Officially, LabTech Automation Nation is an independent event that’s not associated with ConnectWise IT Nation. Plus, ConnectWise has vowed to keep its APIs open, continuing to integrate with multiple RMM platforms.

But the growing synergies between LabTech and ConnectWise are undeniable.

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Nimsoft Promotes Pay As You Go Service Provider Monitoring

Joe Panettieri — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:12:34 +0000

How can managed services providers “scale up” or “scale down” their monitoring services, especially as customers scale up and scale down their cloud and virtualized applications? Nimsoft thinks it has an answer to that riddle. It’s called “see as you go–pay as you go” unified monitoring. Here are some details and analysis.

Nimsoft, as you may recall, is owned by CA Technologies. Nimsoft got its start as an on-premises monitoring platform. But in recent months, Nimsoft has expanded to introduce a unified monitoring dashboard, plus a SaaS platform called Nimsoft On Demand.

The latest Nimsoft move involves “real-time usage metering, elastic portlets and unified service dashboards” for Nimsoft’s on-premises and on-demand offerings.

According to Nimsoft:

“Service providers and IT staffs can now automatically create and deliver monitoring data and alerts that expand and contract with cloud and virtualized service delivery, while tracking and archiving usage in real time for auditing and billing purposes.”

The so-called Elastic IT services, Nimsoft says, enables MSPs to “automate the presentation of monitoring dashboards to clients and flexibly bill for their monitoring services.”

Competitive Moves

Is this Nimsoft move truly unique? I concede: I can’t say for sure. On the one hand, many SaaS-based MSP tools offer pay-as-you-go models based on nodes monitored. As node counts go up or down, monthly bills for the tools typically adjust accordingly.

But it sounds like Nimsoft is doing something different here. This elastic IT services strategy sounds like it’s based on workload sizes — as customers consume more or less monitoring services, it sounds like Nimsoft MSPs will be able to dynamically adjust their monthly billing — similar to how electric utilities bill for power.

Again, I need to study up a bit more on Nimsoft’s strategy here, plus I need to see how the effort compares to rival offerings. Quite a few MSPs already have virtualization expertise, but most MSPs are just getting started with cloud computing. It looks like Nimsoft is trying to anticipate MSPs shifting more customers to cloud systems and utility-based billing. I’ll be watching to see how the strategy plays out.

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All Covered Acquires Yet Another Solutions Provider

Joe Panettieri — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:09:00 +0000

All Covered Inc., a nationwide IT services provider in the U.S., continues to acquire VARs and managed services providers. The latest deal involves All Covered snapping up ANALYSYS, which has offices in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas. I’m not surprised by the news, considering All Covered has been calling multiple VARs and MSPs in the Washington, D.C., area, seeking to discuss potential M&A activity.

All Covered positions itself as “the nation’s leading IT services company serving small to medium-sized businesses.” The 12-year-old company has offices in more than 20 cities, and employees more than 200 engineers. Moreover, All Covered has acquired more than a dozen solutions providers in the past two years.

Financial terms of the most recent deal, involving ANALYSYS, have not been disclosed. Stephen Kolbe, founder and CEO of ANALYSYS, will be joining the management team of All Covered Baltimore.

Some folks say acquisitions in the IT channel continue to accelerate, as VARs and MSPs combine to form regional and national IT service providers. In reality, I’m not sure if “more” deals are happening; perhaps solutions providers are merely getting smarter about announcing and promoting M&A activity to media outlets like MSPmentor.

Still, some MSP industry veterans see opportunity in the M&A sector. One recent example involves Cogent Growth Partners launching a consultancy to help MSPs with pre- and post-M&A strategies.

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MSPmentor Managed Services News & Blog

SMB Crisis Management: Address Smoke Before There’s Fire

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Managed Services Branding: Can Rivals Counter Lenovo Servers?

Setting the MSP Server Pace

Competition Coming?

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SEPATON Expands Sales Into Central Europe

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How to Choose a Managed Services Vendor

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NaviSite Bets On Oracle-Sun Managed Services

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Microsoft vs. Google: Battle for Government SaaS Supremacy

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Managed Services: Is Oracle a Surprise Player?

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LabTech Launches Managed Services Conference

New Conference

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Nimsoft Promotes Pay As You Go Service Provider Monitoring

Competitive Moves

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All Covered Acquires Yet Another Solutions Provider

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