As you strive to transform from a VAR to MSP, you’ll need to choose the most ideal managed services platform for your business. That’s no small task. There are dozens of MSP platforms from which to choose. Prices, features and functions vary greatly. Get Started: Register to enter our Resource Center, where you’ll be able to download guides to numerous MSP platforms. And check back often. We post new guides in the MSPmentor Resource Center every week.
What do you do when your customers tell you that competitors keep coming in to offer a service you don’t yet offer? You figure out a way to offer it. That’s just what Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) reseller Annese & Associates did recently and now it is rolling out a brand new managed service it co-developed with Cisco — managed wireless. The offering, called AnyAccess, is designed to provide management of highly secure and reliable wireless networks for indoor and outdoor environments. Here’s the scoop.
Things are apparently going well over at IT management platform provider BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC). The company today announced that more than 300 enterprises have adopted its cloud-based IT service management solutions. And BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution has doubled its customer base in less than six months.
In what seems to be a situation tailor-made for MSPs, a majority of SMBs with less than 100 employees want to leverage mobile marketing, but lack the time and resources to effectively do so. A new survey of these smaller SMBs from Web.com shows about seven in 10 (69 percent) say mobile marketing is key to their growth in the next five years and will consider increasing their mobile spend this year. However, while 60 percent of SMBs surveyed have a website, only 26 percent have a website that could be considered “mobile-friendly,” and a mere 14 percent have a website specifically designed for mobile access.
Last fall, I wrote how the trend of Big Data – huge, almost unmanageable volumes of data that large enterprises collect via social media, internet, mobile devices, sensing technologies and other means, is impacting data storage trends in the SMB sector (i.e., a likely increase in cloud-based storage among SMBs). However, once that Big Data is stored, SMBs need to analyze it in order to obtain ROI (return on investment) on increased data storage investments. And MSPs just may be able to help them out.
UK-based IT monitoring software provider Opsview has opened a Boston office and introduced an entry-level version of its platform targeted at MSPs. Opsview also announced an update to Opsview Enterprise, Version 4, that adds dashboard capabilities to the product and could appeal to MSPs who need a multi-tenanted solution to adhere to customers’ service level agreements.
Mobile devices provide SMBs with substantial benefits in terms of lower overhead costs, ease of extending the corporate network, and allowing employees greater flexibility in when and where they work. However, as indicated by newly released results of a study from mobile security provider Mobilisafe, mobile devices also expose SMBs to some severe risks.
About a year ago, MSPmentor covered the debate between MSPs opting to pursue hosted VoIP services and those questioning whether such services offered the price/performance edge MSPs needed. A new report from Infonetics Research doesn’t necessarily settle the question of VoIP timing, but does depict a fast-growing hosted VoIP market. The Infonetics study says hosted PBX and unified communications service revenue climbed 33 percent in 2011, while the number of seats rose 44 percent. The uptick likely stems, at least in part, from the smallish base of hosted VoIP business customers.
ConnectWise has started to promote “The IT Office Bundle” — featuring ConnectWise, LabTech and Quosal applications – to VARs, MSPs and IT service providers. News of The IT Office Bundle is not surprising, based on CEO Arnie Bellini’s keynote at the IT Nation conference in November 2011. The bundle seeks to help MSPs with professional services automation, remote monitoring and management, and quoting and sales proposal processes.
SMBs are increasingly relying on a strong base of mobile devices, but are still mostly using the technology for lower-level business tasks.
In yet another sign that SMBs are availing themselves of enterprise systems once thought of as only suitable for large organizations, a new study from Techaisle demonstrates that a large percentage of SMBs plan to adopt business intelligence (BI) systems this year. Twenty-two percent of SMBs currently use BI solutions, and another 27 percent intend to do so this year.
Whaleback Managed Services, a company that provides managed unified communication services, has announced its next generation of enhanced wireless mobility for customers. The company made the CrystalBlue Cordless Phone available to customers as part of Whaleback’s CrystalBlue Cloud-Based Managed Unified Communication Services.
SMBs worldwide plan to significantly boost their usage of paid cloud services in the next five years, according to a new survey of more than 3,000 SMBs in 13 countries.
The phrase “managed services” often brings to mind providing businesses with leading edge technologies that dramatically transform their entire IT infrastructure, such as cloud or mobile. But especially when dealing with SMBs, for whom small problems can quickly grow quite large, sometimes managed services can deliver significant benefits by offering simple technology that streamlines basic processes.
Latisys is on the expansion track once again, adding 72,000 square feet of data center space and rolling out an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud. The company, built on acquisitions, embarked in 2009 on a colocation, managed hosting and managed services strategy. The company in 2010 obtained more capacity for those services, purchasing or expanding data centers in the Washington, D.C. area, Chicago and Orange County, Calif.
Hosted IT automation platform provider OS33 is enhancing its offering with a new tool called the Unified Consumption Report, designed to give MSPs and their customers a more detailed view of the cloud services they are consuming and what they are paying for them.
Azaleos Corp., the managed services provider that specializes in implementing Microsoft applications, has released an independent report in tandem with Osterman Research that details the cost of implementing Microsoft messaging and collaboration systems in both public and private cloud environments. The result? Azaleos and Osterman have found that private environments are a more cost-effective choice.
App stores aren’t just for mobile phones and tablets anymore. A new survey conducted by Partnerpedia revealed that companies want to extend Enterprise App Store solutions to support laptops and desktops, too.
LogMeIn has released a new version of its LogMeIn Pro solution for virtual collaboration. The newest feature? Users now have access to new HD streaming capabilities for video, audio and other multimedia applications that they can connect to from their Macs, iPads and iPhones.
A new ConnectWise-oriented iPad and iPhone App has surfaced. It allows VARs and MSPs to enter time directly into ConnectWise’s PSA system from an iPad or iPhone. The developer is Run Networks — which is part of the ConnectWise partner community.
Tasktop Technologies, the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution provider for MSPs, has developed Tasktop Studio Sync. The new solution is intended to give the companies’ MSP partners and business customers an easier way to connect, configure and maintain their large-scale ALM infrastructures. The development comes during the same week that Tasktop developed a new version of Tasktop Dev specifically for HP.
Tone Software, which provides voice quality, network monitoring and management software for telecommunications and IT infrastructure providers, has released the newest version of its ReliaTel VoIP and UC management platform. The announcement came down down early last week and is a major development for the software provider’s international VAR and managed services provider partners.
Big news today from SolarWinds, the IT management software provider that recently acquired the patch management software provider EminentWare and added new features to its server and application monitoring solution. SolarWinds has now upgraded another one of its IT management solutions — the SolarWinds Storage Manager — to include support for Dell Compellent.
Earlier this month we brought you news from Gorilla Logic, the Quality-as-a-Service (QaaS) platform provider for the enterprise that released two new solutions aimed at accelerating application development and testing. One was the Gorilla Logic Continuous QA Cloud, and MonkeyTalk, which the company says helps accelerate the development of mobile applications.
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