MSPmentor

In separate but somewhat related news items, The Wall Street Journal and Symantec are evangelizing managed services to broader audiences. The newspaper has published a pretty big story declaring managed services as the hot trend in telecommunications. And Symantec has unveiled research that tracks growing demand for managed security services.

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Hewlett-Packard is emerging from its famed R&D garage and joining the managed services party. The hardware giant has announced some new SMB initiatives for solutions providers. Buried within the release was news about HP’s Insight Remote Support tools for MSPs. HP also partnered with USA.NET to offer hosted Microsoft applications to VARs. Here’s MSPmentor’s perspective.

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Managed services aren’t recession proof, but some companies within the market continue to generate remarkable momentum. An example: MX Logic says it added nearly one million new user seats to its managed email and Web security solutions in 2008. Here are some other stats from MX Logic.

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With Heartland Payment Systems’ potentially record-breaking data breach now sparking a class-action lawsuit, there are some important lessons for managed service providers and their customers. Here’s what went wrong at Heartland, and some practical guidance for security-minded MSPs.

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From time to time we hear about “zero-day” or other critical viruses that garner national interest, and require immediate action. The most recent example was the Conficker virus. Naturally, business owners started asking “am I protected?” As we looked at the steps necessary to resolve this issue for our own customers, we were again reminded why being a Managed Service provider is so critical.

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As regulation creeps into all phases of data lifecycle management, managed service providers are assuming greater data protection responsibilities on behalf of their customers. While many customers understand that they have regulatory compliance gaps, challenges persist in how to translate these requirements into data protection policies that are actionable, enforceable, and auditable. The natural place for businesses to turn to is you, their trusted MSP partners to help them translate their data protection requirements into actionable policies that can be centrally managed, enforced and tracked.

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As part of a so-called Channel 2.0 partner program, SonicWALL has launched a managed service provider specialization for its solutions providers. I’m hardly surprised: More than 40 percent of managed service providers sell, service or support SonicWALL security solutions, according to MSPmentor’s research.

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GroundWork Open Source and Roaring Penguin Software Inc. are preparing a technology alliance to jointly serve VARs and managed service providers starting in January 2009, MSPmentor has learned.

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In a number of surveys, various researchers have determined that nearly 70% of companies are at risk for an e-discovery litigation headache. The root cause of the litigation headache is the fact that everyone from government agencies to regulators to judges views electronic communications as business records that must be produced and, in many cases preserved, by organizations.

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As a blogger who watches the software as a service (SaaS) and cloud markets, I find it nearly impossible to keep track of the SaaS brands and subscription services Microsoft continually launches, kills or repositions.

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