MSPmentor

Zoom. Another week flew by. But before I head out for the weekend, I need to reply to a few dozen emails. Plus, here are seven managed services blog entries the MSPmentor team didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending Aug. 20.

7. Relaxing in Big D?: Anybody else feeling run down? Relaxing in August no longer seems possible, considering all of the conferences and trade shows that now fill the month. Eager to unplug, I’m mulling a vacation in Dallas the week of Aug. 23. Then again, maybe not. Ten-dollar jackets and tuxedos may not mix very well… Kidding aside: Safe travels to those attending XChange. Don’t be shy about leaking news and gossip to TMZ (er, MSPmentor and The VAR Guy) while you’re there.

6. One for All?: Global Data Systems runs roughly a dozen different remote monitoring and management tools in its network operations center (NOC). But that’s about to change. GDS is set to consolidate onto Nimsoft Monitoring Solution (NMS), according to statements from both companies.

5. Australia Invasion: Autotask is the latest company to focus its business development on the Australia managed services market. The company will host its first Australia Autotask User Group Meeting on Sept. 8 in Sydney. At the same time, Autotask is launching a multi-city road show that will include Australia, Europe and Canada. Most of the major RMM (remote monitoring and management) and PSA (professional services automation) companies have been spending time in Australia over the past year or two.

4. Grabbing the Spotlight: Quite a few readers emailed me this morning asking how they can potentially appear in our new multi-window FastChat video format. We’re still applying some polish to the back-end technology and the format/approach. But if you want to sit on the hot seat during one of our recordings feel free to email me with ideas… In the meantime, thanks again to Chris Chase (of JoomConnect) and Travis Austin (of MSPintegrations) for participating in the beta.

3. Novell and Service Provider Partners: A few weeks ago, a reader asked me why I’m spending time poking around Novell, which is best known for its SUSE Linux distribution. I suspect Novell’s service provider partner strategy will become much more clear within the next few days. Stay tuned.

2. Thumbs Up: I’ve received about 25 reader emails about Intel acquiring McAfee. Proponents of the deal seem to outnumber skeptics by a margin of four to one. Seems like Intel’s channel and OEM relations may silence McAfee critics who never quite trusted the security software provider’s direct sales team…

1. Final Countdown: The final portions of our third-annual MSPmentor 250 list will debut as HTML pages a bit later today. Thanks to everyone who participated worldwide. Also, I’ll be replying to MSPmentor 250-related emails by tonight. Sorry for the delay and thanks for all the dialog.

Thanks again for reading MSPmentor, and for engaging in a dialog on this site.

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