MSPmentor

I’m set to moderate a channel chief panel hear at CompTIA Breakaway this morning. But before I unplug to participate in the panel, here are seven managed services trends, news tips and industry chatter that I heard during Day 2 of CompTIA Breakaway here in San Antonio, Texas.

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IT solutions and services vendor Guidance Consulting has launched a new line of disaster recovery planning services designed to help companies of all sizes come up with a plan for recovering data and getting up and running with minimal downtime. The twist is that they’re aiming it at companies looking to be better to the environment. Interesting idea — but is just a game of buzzword bingo?

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As Cisco Systems prepares to announce a comprehensive channel strategy for commercial sales, the networking giant is pitching managed services opportunities to channel partners at this week’s CompTIA Breakaway conference in San Antonio, Texas. Here’s what Cisco had to say.

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Hundreds of VARs and managed services providers are attending this week’s CompTIA Breakaway conference in San Antonio, Texas. There’s plenty of official managed services news at the conference. And there also are numerous rumors in the halls. Here are seven managed services highlights from the first day of the conference.

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If you’ve been around the IT industry as long as I have, surely you’ve heard the terms “differentiation” and “value-add” more times than you can count. If I could give each of those terms a monetary value for each time I have heard them, I could have retired in comfort by now.

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Data integration solution vendor Jitterbit has launched a partner program designed to give MSPs, VARs, systems integrators, and anyone else in the IT channel a way to easily and quickly migrate new customers to the cloud. Here’s the scoop.

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Novell Pulse, an enterprise social media platform, is a close cousin of Google Wave, which Google killed off about a week ago. So will Novell continue the drumbeat for Pulse? In an official blog post, Novell says absolutely yes — despite the failure of Google Wave to attract a user base. Here’s the scoop.

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The 2010 Google I/O developer conference may have passed back in May, but Google just posted a recap of the event’s “Making Freemium work – converting free users to paying customers” panel discussion. An impressive lineup of venture capitalists sat down and explained how to make millions by giving services away. Here’s some takeaways for MSPs.

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NaviSite, Inc., which specializes in managed hosting and managed application services, has rejected an unsolicited takeover offer from Atlantic Investors. However, NaviSite left the door open for additional strategic alternatives. Here are some quick details, plus some background on additional managed services M&A activity.

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Google has announced that it’s continuing its SaaS momentum in the education space by way of a deal with the Maryland Education Enterprise Consortium (MEEC). The deal potentially puts the Google Apps productivity suite into every public K-12 district, every library, and every college both public and private in the state of Maryland. Here’s the scoop.

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Hewlett-Packard Co. said CEO Mark Hurd is stepping down following a sexual-harassment probe that found other violations of company standards, according to the Associated Press. Here are details.

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I’ve been a bit distracted today putting the final touches on the third-annual MSPmentor 250 report, which tracks the world’s top managed services experts, entrepreneurs, executives, coaches and community leaders. In the meantime, here are seven managed services blog entries the MSPmentor team didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending Aug. 6, 2010.

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The same question keeps landing in my inbox: Should managed services providers (MSPs) leverage social media? I though we covered this before. But perhaps it’s time to really, really simplify the conversation. If you’re a managed services provider (MSP), here are the four easiest social media moves you should make. Plus, the expected benefit of each move.

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Some pundits say services, rather than hosting infrastructure itself, is where the money is when it comes to the cloud. But now some analysts are suggesting infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud pioneer Amazon Web Services may not be killing it on revenue, but they’re making cloud margins that hover around an estimated 50%. Here’s the scoop.

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If you read MSPmentor closely enough, you’ll discover that we stumbled onto merger discussions (item 6 in this blog entry) between The Planet and SoftLayer back in July 2010. Now, the two hosting providers are confirming those discussions, and an official deal is expected to be completed in Q4 2010. The VAR Guy has the details.

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Our next two MSPmentor Live webcasts are fast approaching. Both events focus on sales and profitability strategies — though each event will lead down a different path. If you’re trying to bolster your managed security services revenues, sharpen your sales strategies or cut your operating expenses then take a closer look at these two webcasts. Here are some quick details.

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The MSPmentor Career Center has received several new job postings for managed services pros. Check our job board and you’ll find submissions — including marketing and sales positions, in particular — in our free MSPmentor Career Center. Here are some quick details.

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Terremark Worldwide, which recently joined The VAR Guy’s SaaS 20 Stock Index, says its colocation and cloud-related revenues continue to grow. For the company’s fiscal Q1 ended June 30, federal bookings also grew — which is impressive considering the federal budget deficit has cast some doubt on government IT spending. Here’s a closer look at Terremark’s latest financial results.

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Google Wave was one of the technologies for MSPs to watch coming into the new year. But any hopes of going into business as a Google Wave service provider can now be considered dashed, as Google announces the discontinuation of Wave development due to a lack of interest. Here’s the obituary.

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MSPmentor talks a lot about the power, promise, and perils of the cloud. But how can you know when it’s the right time to make the jump to SaaS? Update: Mike Martin of the US division of solutions provider Logicalis has six questions MSPs can ask to help make that decision. They’re worth a read.

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Several months ago, MSP coach Stuart Selbst told me to keep an eye on Live Virtual Help Desk (LiveVHD), an upstart provider of NOC (network operations center) and help desk services. It was a quick, generic comment from Selbst. But he had a point: Fast forward to the present, and LiveVHD seems to be inking relationships with a range of MSP-oriented software companies — including a deal with Quest Software’s PacketTrap team. So, what’s LiveVHD’s strategy? My best guess: Competing against NOC and help desk services from the likes of Ingram Micro Seismic, NetEnrich and Zenith Infotech. Here’s some speculation…

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From time to time, MSPmentor explores open source trends in the managed services market. There are anecdotal examples of MSPs leveraging open source. But for the most part, I think MSPs serving small business leverage traditional, Microsoft- and Windows-centric tools. Still, OTRS (Open Technology Real Services) caught my attention this week with a 3.0 help desk beta release. As you may have guessed, OTRS focuses on open source solutions. Is the OTRS help desk ready for prime time? Here’s a reality check.

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In recent months, we’ve heard from a range of MSPs and hosting providers that have embraced PCI compliance to win new business. Building on that theme, CipherOptics is promoting Virtual IP technology that allegedly allows service providers and customers to secure PCI regulated data over public and private networks. Here’s some insight on the effort.

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