MSPmentor

Despite all the hype, it’s still early in the cloud game — and big-time cloud revenues have yet to arrive. At least that’s the spin from Matt Asay, a CNet blogger and chief operating officer at Canonical. Asay notes that Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (perhaps the best-known cloud environment out there) is believed to only generate about $220 million annually in annual revenues. That’s a rather small sum, considering Amazon’s annual corporate revenue was $24.5 billion in 2009. So, when will cloud revenues really kick in?

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IP broadband services provider Covad and communication service firm MegaPath have announced their intent to merge to provide a complete suite of managed services to customers worldwide over what is purportedly America’s largest broadband footprint. Here’s the scoop.

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During the Channel Happy Hour podcast — hosted by Gerard Kane and Brett Martin — last night, I was asked about initial MSP reaction to the recent Kaseya 2 platform launch. I certainly have some thoughts on the matter. Kane and Chuck Lennon (president of TeamLogic IT) also shared some initial reaction on the Kaseya launch. Here’s some perspective…

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Have you noticed that we are in a time of high unemployment? If you are expecting growth this year, be smart and staff up your managed services practice and business operations NOW. As part of that process, use a timed aptitude test to help screen potential candidates. Here’s why. And here’s how.

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Qwest Communications — which already counts 95% of the Fortune 500 as their customers — is going after the midmarket with an IBM-powered line of managed services aimed at enterprises with 15,000 seats or less. Here’s the deal.

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Veeam, providers of solutions for VMware data center environments, has launched a partner program to help MSPs and cloud services providers manage, protect, and, yes, monetize virtualized systems. Here are some details.

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N-able, with an assist from managed services providers, is making a more aggressive push into mid-market corporate IT departments. The effort includes a new web site that explains the potential benefits of N-able’s network managed systems management tools to midsize companies. Here are the details.

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Can one person build a managed services business? Or does it take a close working partnership between two or more executives? I realize the answer varies from company to company but I’m hearing more and more examples of MSPs that have two leaders working in tandem. A key example: mindSHIFT, which landed atop our annual MSPmentor 100 survey the past two years, has promoted Chief Operating Officer Mona Abutaleb into the president position, working closely with CEO Paul Chisholm. Here’s a look at Abutaleb’s responsibilities amid mindSHIFT’s continued managed services expansion.

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One of the reasons I left “corporate life” was to move faster and spend less time in meetings, where conversations go around and around and sometimes never reach a natural conclusion. Still, meetings are mandatory for success — especially as managed services providers strive to get their staff members working toward company and departmental goals. Some simple tips — from books like Mastering the Rockefeller Habits — can help your team to measure its progress on a daily and weekly basis. Here’s how.

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MSPmentor and The VAR Guy each are hosting webcasts for MSPs and solutions providers in April. The lineup starts April 7, with The VAR Guy Live’s Four Steps to SaaS Success. Next, the MSPmentor Live webcast on April 21 offers a vPro and Windows 7 reality check. Here’s a closer look at the agendas and guest speakers for both events.

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As the adoption rate of managed IT services continues to rise, industry talk grows louder that it’s fast becoming a commodity play. Fortunately, for value-focused MSPs, there are two good reasons why commodity fears are largely a non issue.

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As the first quarter of 2010 nears its close, anecdotal evidence from companies such as Autotask and N-able suggest that the managed services market is off to a solid start for the year. Autotask CEO Bob Godgart provided some upbeat anecdotes to a local Albany, N.Y., newspaper. And N-able CEO Gavin Garbutt shared some “freemium” business milestones with me in a FastChat video conversation. Here’s a look at statements from both companies, and the implications for MSPs.

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Zenoss, which makes open source server and network monitoring software, has a message for service providers: The company’s software has successfully landed in major accounts ranging from Computer Sciences Corp. to Verizon. Here are some details — plus, some clues about where Zenoss may be heading with Cisco Systems Inc.

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Why do many small and midsize businesses continue to reject cloud-centric IT proposals from managed services providers? Vembu (the backup software provider), Forrester Research and RackSpace each (independently) provide some interesting theories. Plus, Vembu offers up four secrets to successfully selling cloud services. Here’s a look.

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Hostway Corp., which specializes in web hosting and cloud hosting services, has attracted $110 million in financing to support a “continued growth plan.” The deal is the latest example of (A) a web hosting company attracting money and (B) a web hosting company trying to search engine optimize around the cloud hosting term. Here are some quick details for managed services providers.

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RIM has confirmed a the BlackBerry outage that some experienced over the weekend was in fact the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) 3.0 upgrade going live in real time. The headlining act is better Gmail integration, but here are deeper details.

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In theory, our team is set to begin the weekend in a few hours. But in reality, we’ve got our hands full with some travel planning that will take us to Miami, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Silicon Valley over the next four weeks. Oh, and potentially one other stop. But more on that later. In the meantime, here are seven managed services blog entries MSPmentor’s team didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending March 26.

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itControl Solutions, which develops the itControl Suite platform for managed services providers, has made a strategic hire and is preparing a next-generation interface — code-named CAKE — for its partner base. Here are some quick details.

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While boutique and specialty integrators may operate on the bleeding edge at times, the larger consulting houses typically don’t. That mindset makes Accenture’s interest in cloud computing notable. If a company with a heritage in the buttoned-down world of “Big Eight” management consulting backs the cloud, it’s a fairly safe bet the technology has entered the mainstream. Here’s why.

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I’m busy booking travel for channel partner and managed services conferences this April. Among my destinations: Autotask Community Live, scheduled for April 18-20 in Miami. Here are five key trends I’ll be exploring at the conference, which is designed for VARs and MSPs that want to automate their businesses.

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As the VoiceCon trade show unfolded this week in Orlando, I received dozens of emails about new unified communications systems — both on-premises and hosted. I know there’s big-time demand for VoIP and UC in small businesses. But I wonder how many MSPs are willing to manage their customers’ dial-tones.

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NTRglobal has named a new CEO and plans to launch “new on-demand solutions for IT automation.” The company’s new leader, Gilles Samoun (pictured), has extensive experience in the software as a service (SaaS) market — most notably as founder of Qualys. I still need to speak directly with NTRglobal to get the deeper story, but here are some initial thoughts for NTRglobal’s managed services partners.

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So, you’re a managed services provider looking for some key sales, financial and business insights. By all means: Keep coming to MSPmentor. But I also need to tip my hat. In recent days, the team over at SMB IT Pros has delivered some compelling content and guidance for MSPs. Here’s a look at what they’ve been up to…

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