I spent much of the week at Ingram Micro Cloud Summit in Phoenix, Ariz. There was plenty of managed services chatter at the conference. But as usual, we’ve got too many news leads and too little time. So here are seven managed services blog entries MSPmentor didn’t have time to write for the week ending June 3, 2011.
7. New Milestone: VaultLogix, the online data protection specialist, now has roughly 600 MSPs in its partner program. The company seemed to be pretty busy discussing new engagements at the Ingram conference…
6. What’s In a Name?: It’s clear that Ingram Micro remains committed to both managed services and cloud computing. But Ingram is de-emphasizing the old Ingram Micro Seismic brand, which was built to promote managed services and recurring revenue strategies for VARs and aspiring MSPs. Seismic was barely mentioned at the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit, though there was plenty of managed services discussion coupled with the cloud.
5. Nearly A Deal: More sources confirm that Ingram Micro North America’s RMM partnership base will expand beyond Level Platforms, Nimsoft and N-able to soon include Kaseya. I believe Ingram offers Level Platforms and Nimsoft as on-premise line card items; N-able as both on-premise and via N-able’s SaaS platform; and soon Kaseya as SaaS. I’m not sure if Ingram will offer Kaseya on-premise.
4. Big Switch, Big Crowd: White Glove Technologies, an MSPmentor 100 company in Texas, is making the leap to LabTech Software‘s remote monitoring and management platform, CEO Tommy Wald confirmed to me. Among the motivations: Tight integration with ConnectWise. Speaking of ConnectWise, the company expects roughly 2,000 people to attend the IT Nation conference in November. Roughly 400 people signed up during the first day of registration this week, though I don’t know if that figure includes HTG members — which typically organize their annual meeting in association with the IT Nation gathering.
3. The API Guy: Autotask Senior VP Len DiCostanzo is best-known for educating MSPs. But it sounds like he’s spending more and more time focused on technology partners that plan to leverage Autotask’s APIs to integrate with the company’s PSA platform.
2. Cloud Channel War: Multiple sources say Ingram Micro is using Jamcracker as its Cloud Procurement System for VARs and MSPs. Meanwhile, Tech Data is using Parallels for a similar cloud system for VARs in Europe. And I believe Parallels has won at least one other big distributor cloud deal in the U.S. — though it has yet to be announced. Generally speaking, Parallels is widely deployed among hosting companies launching SaaS applications. Ingram’s bet on Jamcracker is interesting because Jamcracker has tried to reinvent itself multiple times over the past decade. We’ll be watching to see how the Ingram Cloud Procurement System comes along.
1. Managed Services Valuations: All Covered continues to approach MSPs about potential buyouts, two MSPs tell me. Separately, another MSP tells me the typical valuation is four to six times annual EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization).
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading MSPmentor and for all the interaction. Our staff really appreciates the dialog.
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Posted In: Seven Managed Services Blogs
Tags: All Covered | Autotask | Cloud Procurement System | ConnectWise | HTG Peer Groups | Ingram Micro Cloud Summit | Ingram Micro Seismic | IT Nation | Jamcracker | Kaseya | LabTech Software | Len DisCostasnzo | Level Platforms | N-able | NimSoft | Parallels | Tech Data | Tommy Wald | VaultLogix | White Glove Technologies
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Regarding point 5… Ingram does offer Nimsoft as both on-premise AND on-demand (SaaS). The Nimsoft on-demand solution has equal functionality, scalability, etc. to our Nimsoft on-premise solution.
Ken Vanderweel
Marketing Director – Service Providers
Nimsoft
Ken: thanks for the correction on item 5. Safe travels and good to see you at Ingram Micro Cloud Summit.
-jp
Joe, Jamcracker was founded in 1999 with the vision of being an ASP aggregator, and the ASP model was arguably ‘Cloud 1.0.’ However the ASP model was flawed because it lacked scalability and true economic value and was eventually replaced with the multi-tenant SaaS model (which I’ll call ‘Cloud 2.0′). But by working with ASPs we learned a lot about services aggregation and how to automate order-to-cash workflow for disparate services. Over the years we leveraged these learnings to refine our offerings and build an ecosystem of around 100 different SaaS/cloud providers that we pre-integrated to our multi-tiered distribution platform. This platform + ecosystem enablement solution allowed us to enable organizations such as telcos and IT providers to unify the delivery of SaaS/cloud offerings from our ecosystem, bundled with their own core and partners’ services, using our platform and managed services in a completely white-labeled fashion — whether selling direct or through channels.
Today the market has passed into the 3rd generation of Cloud offerings that span the gamut from infrastructure, development environments, applications and BPO services. Now there are thousands of different cloud services (and the number is growing exponentially), customer adoption is growing, and as a result Gartner and others have identified the need for Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) intermediaries to aggregate delivery and consumption of disparate clouds, which they predict will be a multi-hundred billion dollar opportunity by 2015. Realizing the significance of this opportunity, telcos, IT providers, distributors and large enterprises are now moving in full force towards the CSB model, and many of them are working with Jamcracker because we are well-suited to being a CSB enabler due to the focus and experience-based investments we’ve made over the past decade in aggregated services delivery.
So you can legitimately fault us for being too early to market with our vision — but by thinking, testing, learning, developing and evolving we believe we’re very well positioned to help our partners on the ecosystem and distribution side succeed with the CSB model. Regarding Parallels, they come more from the hosting automation side of the market and have built a great business in doing this, but that is not what we do.
Sorry for the long monologue, but thanks for accommodating the dialogue. As Tiffani Bova so eloquently stated, the market is in a real sea change now that will have profound implications on how services are delivered and consumed, and the months and years ahead will be very interesting for all parties in the services delivery value chain.
Best regards,
Steve Crawford
VP Marketing & Business Development
Jamcracker, Inc.
Steve,
Thanks for the deeper insights. That’s certainly why we keep the comments area wide open for business dialog. We value the info, as do our readers.
I certainly remember the ASP days, the dot-com days, etc. Jamcracker is one of the few companies from that era that has popped up again on my radar. I don’t think Jamcracker has officially confirmed the Ingram cloud aggregator relationship. But if you are involved in such a relationship please keep me posted on your progress. And thanks again for the note.
-jp
Hey Joe. Just a quick clarification on #5 – back in February 2011, Level Platforms did take the hosted (cloud) version of Managed Workplace over from Ingram however Ingram partners can still purchase both the hosted and on-prem versions of Managed Workplace via Ingram Micro.
Thanks,
Rob
Rob T. Rae
Director of Partner Development
Level Platforms
rrae@levelplatforms.com
1-800-418-0881 ext. 360