MSPmentor

Nobody, it seems, is immune to an economic slowdown.

As the Bulls and Bears do battle on Wall Street, certain technology sectors will hold up better than others during a slowing economy.

Managed services seems to be holding its own, and Autotask’s CEO remained upbeat during a call with me yesterday. But two other hot buttons — Software as a Service and Open Source — are now coming under Wall Street’s skeptical microscope.

Yes, I’ve predicted that companies like Red Hat and Salesforce.com (along with MSP platform providers) will weather the economic storm better than traditional closed-source or on-premise software companies. However… Read More >

Back in December, I blogged a bit about video surveillance as a managed service, and the rise of Managed Video Service Providers. Readers sent me plenty of emails and questions about both posts. But it wasn’t until last week, when I spoke with Envysion CEO Matt Steinfort, that I began to realize some of the new video opportunities awaiting managed service providers.

At first glance, most people think video surveillance is nothing more than traffic cameras mounted at intersections or video cameras monitoring retail cash registers. That’s only part of the story. The real opportunity for managed service providers is to marry video surveillance with business intelligence, point of sale, customer relationship management and other applications. Read More >

From EMC to Symantec, storage companies want their piece of the managed services pie. Toward that end, EMC is launching a software-as-a-service platform that allows customers to backup their information to EMC data centers. Meanwhile, Symantec is putting the final touches on its Symantec Protection Network — which will allow VARs to offer storage management services to their customers.

For managed service providers, the race is on to find a storage service that complements their existing platforms and sales strategies. Companies such as Symantec and Vembu have vowed to promote their managed storage services through channel partners, while direct sales veterans such as EMC still receive a healthy dose of skepticism from potential partners. Read More >

Even amid a questionable economy, John Roberts (pictured) sounds upbeat. As CEO of SugarCRM, Roberts leads one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing open source software providers. But that’s not all. SugarCRM also offers its software as a service (SaaS).

Smart move. As this site has pointed out before, the worlds of open source, managed services and SaaS are converging. And for good reason: Customers and their solutions providers increasingly want open options with predictable pricing and low acquisition costs. “The new rules of the industry are no proprietary code and no lock-in techniques,” said Roberts during a phone chat with me on January 16. Those trends and SugarCRM’s market opportunities should allow the company to launch an initial public offering within two years, he added. Read More >

It’s one small piece of information that provides big-time hope to the managed services market. Kaseya says its annual revenue more than doubled in 2007 compared to 2006. Solutions providers can breathe a collective sigh of relief — at least for the next few weeks — as they digest the Kaseya news. But we should all keep the news in perspective. Here’s why. Read More >

Many managed service providers are launching corporate blogs to get their message out to the masses and build stronger user communities. Do corporate blogs really deliver results? Absolutely — if you get up to speed fast. But if you don’t master the art of blogging, you’ll fall on your face in a very public way. Here are five secrets to success with corporate blogging. Read More >

Hot markets often lead to hot job titles. Editors who leap from print to online want to become chief content officers or chief bloggers. In the channel, the hottest title right now seems to be VP of managed services — someone who is responsible for driving an organization’s go-to-market strategy in the managed service provider sector. Read More >

Distributors spent 2007 telling me about their managed services strategies. Now, they’re back — this time, telling me about their software as a service (SaaS) strategies. It’s the latest example of SaaS and managed services converging with each other.  Skeptical? Check out the latest news from Avnet, which is launching a SaaS initiative in the email and groupware sector. Read More >