MSPmentor

MSPWorld, the MSPAlliance’s conference for managed services providers, will be co-located this year at ITExpo West 2010, scheduled for Oct. 4-6 in Los Angeles. The move potentially opens up MSPWorld to a broader audience of Internet Telephony experts, but MSPWorld will also need to compete with roughly six other conferences that will be co-located at ITExpo. Here are the details.

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I was on the road today. The usual flood of email hit my inbox. Some senders expected instant responses from me. But I’m starting to listen to good advice from Stuart Crawford, the former VAR who now specializes in social media. In a polite but clear manner, Crawford reminds senders on a regular basis that email isn’t designed for instant communications. Within our own business, we’re spending less time on email and more time using Google Docs to manage internal discussions. Here’s why. And here’s how.

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Some Australian managed services providers allegedly are in an “uproar” over Kaseya’s SaaS pricing vs. on-premise pricing. But take a closer look at the situation, and you’ll likely discover the SaaS “uproar” may actually involve an apples-to-oranges price comparison of tools that offer vastly different capabilities. Here’s some perspective.

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It’s a common question for VAR and MSPs: How can you get into the SaaS market while avoiding strategic and tactical errors? For the answer to that question join us for our Four Steps to SaaS Success webcast series, which starts April 7 at 2:00 p.m eastern.

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QuoteWerks, a sales quoting and proposal tool, continues to strengthen its integrations to PSA (professional services automation) software platforms like Autotask, ConnectWise and Tigerpaw Software. The latest move involves a direct integration with ConnectWise. Here are the details.

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The MSPmentor Career Center has received more than a dozen new job listings over the past few days. All of the submissions — including sales and technical positions — are now advertised in our free MSPmentor Career Center. Here are some quick details.

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It was another typical week at MSPmentor, filled with planes, trains and automobiles. Before I catch a flight from San Francisco to New York, here are seven managed services blog entries the MSPmentor team didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending March 5, 2010.

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Rewind to 1995, Bill Gates wrote the famed Internet Tidal Wave memo to help turn Microsoft toward the Web. Earlier today, current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was trying to recapture some of that old memo magic, this time saying Microsoft is going “all in” with cloud computing. Will that old memo magic work again? Our sister site, The VAR Guy, has some thoughts.

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The convergence of SaaS with managed services is on display at the Intermedia Partner Summit in Silicon Valley. A few minutes ago, MSPs started asking Intermedia if the company would integrate its hosted Exchange service with MSP-oriented tools. Intermedia said yes. In fact, some of the work is already complete. And more integrations are coming.

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Give Rackspace Cloud credit: As part of a system upgrade, RackSpace Cloud is proactively telling customers that their sites may be offline for as long as 90 minutes on March 6. As a Rackspace Cloud customer myself, I appreciate the heads up. Still, I’ve got key concerns and I have to ask an obvious question…

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At the Intermedia Partner Summit in Silicon Valley, managed service providers and VARs are discussed how to compete with Google Apps and Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). The discussion involved  MSPs that offer hosted Exchange in partnership with Intermedia. Here are the key takeaways.

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Earlier today, I raised five key questions about the hosted Exchange and hosted Unified Communications markets. Now, I’ve gathered a few answers to those questions at the Intermedia Partner Summit in Silicon Valley. Here are some clues about how VARs and MSPs are transitioning their hosted Exchange strategies.

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If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. After hosting a successful 2009 managed services partner summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, the N-able conference will return to the same location in 2010. I think the agenda is still pending, but the N-able Partner Summit is confirmed for October 20-22, according to the company’s blog. We’ll be back with more details once the agenda comes into focus.

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Managed security service providers and cloud vendors for about the past year have been broadening their offerings to include application firewalls. Against this backdrop, Citrix Systems Inc. this week rolled out a line of application firewalls, targeting MSSPs and cloud providers as well as enterprise customers. Here’s some background.

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I’m heading over to the Intermedia Partner Summit this morning in Silicon Valley, where several dozen MSPs will be hearing about the hosted Exchange and hosted Unified Communications markets. Intermedia is one of the best-known providers of white label hosted Exchange services to MSPs. But the company has also been building a hosted Unified Communications partnership with Unison Technologies. Here are five things I hope to learn at the conference…

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I’m as tired of the ‘cloud’ word as the next guy. But cloud is everywhere at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. And here’s an interesting twist: The folks at Zscaler, a cloud security start-up, made their case to me that cloud-centric security is pressuring traditional on-premise security appliances. Is that a fact or a marketing claim?

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In recent months, I’ve blogged quite a bit about MSPs moving up the stack from from managed infrastructure to managed applications. In fact, I’ve advocated an increased applications focus. But a recent move by NaviSite, Inc. has me rethinking the managed applications market. Here’s why.

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A hedge fund has offered to acquire Novell, developer of SUSE Linux and a range of systems management and security tools. Moments ago, Novell confirmed that it plans to review the buyout offer. But our sister site, The VAR Guy, wonders if another software company will step in to buy Novell. Here’s the speculation.

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It’s another subtle sign that Dell is listening to feedback. The hardware giant’s lengthy ProManaged Managed Services brand will now be known simply as Dell Managed Services. And yes, Dell’s MSP-centric partner program remains in place. Here are some more details.

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Many MSPs are trying to sort out their software as a service (SaaS) strategies — with an eye toward Hosted Exchange and Hosted SharePoint. The big question: How do you continue to maintain customer control, even as SaaS platforms like Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) move into the market and launch low-ball pricing? Instead of living in fear, smart MSPs may want to start checking in with large web hosting providers — many of whom have already sorted out their SaaS and Hosted Exchange strategies.

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As the RSA Conference kicks off today in San Francisco, much of the buzz involves security as a service. But here’s the challenge: Nearly 80 percent of top managed services providers already offer some form of managed security to their customers, according to our third-annual MSPmentor 100 results. So where can MSPs go next with managed security? Here are some clues.

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Most eyes are focused on this week’s RSA Security conference in San Francisco. But I took a detour to Las Vegas, where SAP is hosting a partner conference and some news is already  surfacing at the event. And yes, it involves managed services converging with SAP.

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By now, you know the drill: Each week MSPmentor intends to write dozens of additional managed services blog entries. But each week, our team winds up with distractions — travel, phone calls, and something called “occasional sleep.” Here are seven managed services blog entries we didn’t have time to write for the week ending February 26, 2010.

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