A few hundred managed services providers (MSPs) are set to attend the N-able Partner Summit later this week (Oct. 20-22, Scottsdale, Ariz.). So, what managed services trends can we expect at the conference, and what messages will N-able CEO Gavin Garbutt deliver to the crowd? Here are five clues and predictions from MSPmentor.
1. The Theme: N-able hopes to show attendees how to achieve 100 percent IT coverage with their customers. That’s a tall order. We’ll be watching to see how N-able intends to help partners make that a reality.
2. Heavy Hitters: I’m not positive, but I believe Rackspace, Google and Microsoft will be on hand to discuss their various cloud computing partner initiatives. It should be a healthy discussion; I can’t recall of another conference where the trio agreed to sit on a panel together to help educate MSPs.
3. Expanded Executive Suite: During previous N-able Partner Summits, CEO Garbutt and VPs Mike Cullen and Derik Belair led most of the major strategic company discussions. But this time around, we’ll be watching and asking about COO JP Jauvin‘s impact at the company. After consulting with N-able for quite some time, Jauvin joined the company in June 2010.
4. Mid-Market Moves: As you may recall, N-able routes mid-market sales leads to partners. We’ve spoken with a few solutions providers that have sold N-able’s software into mid-size enterprises. No doubt, Garbutt will try to accelerate the mid-market channel strategy during the summit.
5. More Freemiums?: At the 2009 conference, Garbutt unveiled a freemium endpoint security strategy. The effort allowed N-able partners to leverage free endpoint security licenses as a means to attract new customers. By September 2010, N-able was back with a freemium backup strategy, through a partnership with CA Inc. Where is Garbutt taking the freemium strategy next? We’ll be watching and listening for clues.
If you’d like to potentially meet at the N-able Partner Summit, I’m attending on Thursday and Friday. Post a comment below or send email to Joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com.
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Posted In: Events | North America | Partner Program | Remote Monitoring & Management Software | Sales
Tags: Business Productivity Online Suite | Derik Belair | endpoint security | Freemium | Gavin Garbutt | Google | JP Jauvin | Microsoft BPOS | Mike Cullin | N-able Partner Summit | N-able Partner Summit 2010 | online backup | online storage | Rackspace | SaaS Backup
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100% coverage? Indeed, that IS a tall order. Given the fact that SNMP monitoring cannot provide anything close to 100% visibility, it only addresses device silos and status, one-to-many remote monitoring and management is just a subset of IT operations. Sure, RMM is salable and scalable, but calling it 100% IT coverage, that’s a stretch. Until MSPs are tracking business information flow along with its impact on resources and risk, which is the basis for having a network in the first place, all reference to IT coverage is just another name for technology baby sitting: Alert (burp), reset box. Port down (diaper change) etc. Data leaking from network (baby sitter sneaks out back door to meet up with BF).
Scott: Thanks for your insights. 100% certainly is a stretch goal. How can MSPs march toward that goal? I’ll press N-able CEO Gavin Garbutt for answers. In the meantime, thanks for reading MSPmentor.
-jp
JP,
Enjoy my town. Sorry I will miss your visit.
Stu
The challenge at-hand: What’s practical vs. what’s right. Practical supports the popular one-to-many remote management paradigm. “Practical” provides the ability to easily service many customers and hundreds or even thousands of devices with a handful of people. “Right” is that which empowers the customer to align their IT investment and operations with how it actually supports their business objectives (the creation, storage, access and transmission of information) and towards generating a profit. To the extent that IT operations aren’t supporting profits, very likely it’s a quiet sucking sound that drains productivity, whittles-away at security and turns black to red. Is doing what’s right too expensive? Not sure? When I recently spoke with a large MSP, I was told that they like pushing a single button to implement mass change in their client base. Is easy the lowest common denominator? So it seems. One of my customers told me that they use their NMS to tell them how much and that they use our software to tell them what’s going on. I really liked the description. I also think this is what IT management really boils down to: technology is just the tool. How you use that tool is what makes the difference between making a table or a pile of saw dust.
Hey Joe! You got it – key execs from Google, Microsoft, Avnet and Rackspace Hosting will all be participating in a cloud-focused, education-driven panel Friday morning at the Summit. See you soon!
Hi Joe,
We’ll be at the show and will certainly look for you.
See you soon,
James Foxall
President, Tigerpaw Software
See you there Joe P.
Really looking forward to seeing N-Able’s version of swimming up stream to the mid-market/Enterprise space and getting your take on the rest.
Tony C.
JP! i won’t be there…due to a couple of things on my plate
but the ConnectWise team will be represented and looking forward ANOTHER great N-able event! j. 
Jeannine Edwards
Director, ConnectWise Community
Hey folks: Just a quick note thanking everyone for the chatter. Looking forward to being back on the road covering conferences live.
-jp