SaaS and BPOS sessions at Microsoft WPC were crowded. But many of the attendees were fearful of the offering(s) and the implications.

At the least, I think MSPs need to try a project or two involving BPOS or another set of SaaS applications.

Some SaaS partner programs won’t be worth time/money.

But at this early stage, it seems like trial and error — and a lot of networking with peer MSPs — is the only way to succeed. In particular, I suspect peer group members are speed dialing each other regularly to get a feel for early SaaS partner programs.

MSPs need to think of these services as simply another great new technology that can add value to their end customers. Cloud Services can simplify and remove some of your old tasks and sources of revenue (e.g. managing an Exchange Server). However they also add an entire new layer of complexity and therefore opportunity, while increasing the need for a single point of management, which is at the heart of the MSP value proposition.

Your customers only care about whether their applications are working as expected. To reap the rewards for addressing this emerging opportunity MSPs need the ability to monitor, triage and remediate issues that may occur anywhere across this more complex environment.

Microsoft clearly understands this (see http://www.microsoft.com/online/partner/solutions-showcase.mspx ) where Level Platforms Cloud Services monitoring is highlighted. We enjoyed the opportunity to demo these features and revenue opportunities to hundreds of solution providers at Microsoft’s BPOS booth at WPC.

There is still a lot of business around managing local PCs and servers but the big new opportunities for growth and profit are all about helping your customers utilize emerging technologies. Cloud Services has to be near the top of the list.

Peter Sandiford
CEO Level Platforms
http://www.levelplatforms.com

1. Death of CIO = false. Consider the situation at our company. All of our applications are either hosted or SaaS. But we still need strategic leaders to decide on IT solutions that drive our business forward. We then need tactical managers who pick and choose the most ideal SaaS and open source components to snap together. And then we need some really sharp developers who can do some solid customization for us. Notice that I didn’t mention a need for a pure reseller. Our business doesn’t need resellers. We need a few strategic advisors on IT, cloud and SaaS.

2. Open Source in Microsoft’s cloud = True. A lot of folks forget that leading open source apps (MySQL, SugarCRM, etc.) all run on Windows Server. So, I’m hardly surprised that Microsoft will welcome open source apps into the Windows Azure cloud. The Windows 7 desktop team could learn A LOT from that strategy. Back in the Azure cloud, the big question is whether open source app providers will actually take the time to embrace Microsoft’s cloud. That’s still open to debate.

3. Can Microsoft and managed service providers add value to what comes out of the plug = yes. But the answers are still evolving. Many of Microsoft’s most successful partners are customizing hosted SharePoint for customers. Other VARs/MSPs are becoming SaaS specialists that move open source applications into Amazon.con’s cloud. Look at Levementum and OpenBI as two successful integrators that have mastered cloud opportunities.

Thanks again for raising great questions. And I concede: My thoughts contain my strong opinions rather than hard facts. So, a lot of this is open to debate.
-jp

From an IT role perspective, is MS toying with a ‘provider only role’ offering? The introduction of MySQL and other ‘open-source’ initiatives into this cloud seems an interesting direction.

I keep reading about the death of the CIO, however, somewhere strategy must meet utility.

When your internet application is as reliable, available and usable (responsiveness) as the plain old telephone system (POTS) then who provides what comes out of the ‘plug’ could be anyone (ATT, DELL, Google, MS, or Apple). Albeit the plug might be wireless.

So how in your opinion does MS continue to add value to what comes out of the ‘plug’?