The Cisco Partner Velocity event in Paris has wrapped up, and I’ll be flying back to New York on Nov. 15. In the meantime, here are seven managed services blog entries our staff didn’t have time to write for the week ending Nov. 13.
7. MSPs Welcome: Axient, which specializes in data backup and business continuity has launched version 1.0 of a managed services partner portal.
6. The Big Picture: I have a video interview with ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini that I still need to publish. In it, Bellini describes how MSPs and VARs (“IT Nation”) can defend the last mile (local business relationships) from big vendors. I hope to have the video live early the week of Nov. 16. In the meantime, our MSPmentor FastChat video center is loaded with new interviews.
5. Blogging Contributors: We’ve expanded our team of contributing bloggers. More to share next week, including bios and beats for our writers.
4. Deal or No Deal?: Edison Peres, Cisco Systems’ senior VP of worldwide channels, mentioned to me that Cisco witnessed fewer mergers and acquisitions among VARs and solutions providers this year. The reason: Most sellers were holding out for inflated multiples that buyers weren’t willing to pay. (More thoughts from Peres here.) Still, some deals are getting done. The latest example: Uptime IT Systems Inc. of Pittsburgh is buying Microvations, Inc. of Charlotte.
3. MSPWorld: How’s the conference? Who’s attending? Send along news and we’ll give it a look.
2. Feedback Please: Our beta tests of www.MSPtweet.com and www.VARtweet.com. Check out both sites and send me your feedback (joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc.com). We’ll be making some tweaks ahead of the sites’ official launches in January 2010.
1. Clouds: Two major MSP-centric clouds are set to launch before the close of 2009. I hope to get a preview within the next two weeks and will be sure to share the details.
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Posted In: Finance | Mergers & Acquisions | PSA | RMM | Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service
Tags: Axient | Cisco Edison Peres | Cisco Managed Services | Cisco Systems | ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini | MSPtweet | VARtweet
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Joe – thanks for all the reporting from Paris, I am sure you have been busy. Now I only hope you took your wife to some of the places I recommended… Safe travels! -GLK
Gerard: We saw nearly everything on your list except Shakespeake’s. Sorry to let you down on that one.
MSP World Las Vegas was by far one of the best MSP Alliance shows to date. We started with a keynote from Microsoft discussing Windows 7, from that we broke out into three general group discussions. These discussions really got the attendees involved and gave them a voice at the conference. Day two we had three tracks: technical (vendor presentations), advanced, and sales & marketing. The sales & marketing track was by far the most popular track with standing room only in most sessions. The attendees had the benefit of hearing how industry leaders such as Don Begg, Mike Cooch, Mark Scott and Dan Wilson are growing their managed services businesses.
For full disclosure I am on the MSP Alliance Board of Advisors so my opinion may be a bit biased. That being said my only incentive for this post is to let those in our community that could not attend know that they should try and make the next event.
Lane Smith
Do IT Smarter
Hey Lane: Thanks for the recap. Seems like the sales and marketing theme continues to be the real focal area for most MSPs these days.
-jp