Imagine managing 14.1 million web sites, 57,000 Dell servers and the second largest number of Red Hat hosting licenses in the country.
Those are just a few of the jaw-dropping figures I heard while speaking with Carl Meadows, senior manager at The Planet — a large managed hosting provider in Houston. More than a co-location company, The Planet is moving its six data centers toward software as a service (SaaS) and a range of managed services across Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server.
To get a feel for The Planet’s managed services strategy, check out the company’s Planet Northstar brand. The initiative includes managed security, monitoring, backup and storage, among other options.
Over time, I expect The Planet to both compete and cooperate with VARs and MSPs. Over the next few months, the company expects to launch SaaS intiatives around Microsoft Exchange and other mainstream applications. There are strong indications that The Planet’s partners will be able to resell and re-brand those SaaS applications as their own.
Yesterday was my first chat with Meadows. But it reinforced my belief that data center providers are on a collision course with small managed service providers.
Consider the situation here at MSPmentor’s parent — Nine Lives Media Inc.: Our Web sites are our business. We depend on a hosting partner to manage, secure and back-up those systems all for a flat monthly fee. It’s the first and most important bill we pay every month.
We don’t have the need — yet — for a managed service provider that provides remote desktop support and related on-site services. But when we do have a need for those services, I wonder who come calling: A local VAR or our existing hosting partner?
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Posted In: Platforms | Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service
Tags: Dell | Managed Service Providers | Managed Services | MSPs | Nine Lives Media Inc. | Red Hat Enterprise Linux | Web hosting
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The convergence of managed services and the datacenter has been a much discussed topic amongst staff at my offices. With the increased awareness of cloud services and the SMB markets need for cost effective continuity and recovery plans, all roads lead back to the datacenter.
MSP’s have helped alleviate the fears of many customers in successfully managing their client environments remotely and securely. This has translated to customer having the confidence to allow their data to leave the friendly confines of their offices. Many are sticking their toe in the waters using a remote backup service; others are hosting mission critical applications in a datacenter.
The increased availability of bandwidth, the advancement of virtualization technologies, and many organizations green initiatives will push clients to the datacenter. As clients move services beyond simple web hosting to advanced datacenter services, the need for support grows exponentially. Forward thinking MSP’s will develop a strategy to deliver these services, whether it be a partnership with a datacenter provider or building out a facility of their own.
Brian Doyle
http://www.fandotech.com
Brian: I think entrepreneurs will also march toward data centers. Look at our company: When we launched, we knew we needed a development team and a hosting provider for our business. Internal IT help wasn’t a priority. We standardized our “on-premise” network using commodity gear (Apple MacBooks, Linksys, etc.) and Web 2.0 applications (Skype).
The real company magic and innovation happened in a data center, where our sites, databases and company assets live.