MSPmentor

I’ve been hyping the convergence of open source, software as a service (SaaS) and managed service providers (MSPs) in recent months. But I have to admit, it has been difficult to find MSPs that actually run a large mix of open source SaaS systems. That all changed tonight at the MSP Revolution conference, when I met John Truitt, president of Kalleo Technologies.

Kalleo, based in Peducah, Kentucky, leverages Asterisk, SugarCRM, Nagios and GroundWork Open Source as part of its daily managed services business. The systems aren’t perfect — not yet, at least — but they reflect key emerging trends that will go mainstream across the managed services market over the next two to five years, I believe. Here’s why.

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If you’re a managed service provider mulling your VoIP options, keep this in mind: A growing number of customers — especially in Europe — are embracing IP phone systems that leverage open source and Asterisk. In fact, the European market for open source VoIP is growing 70 percent annually, according to one market researcher. Here’s the scoop. Read More >

Smith on VoIP, one of my favorite blogs, has an interesting piece today about JAJAH — a fast-growing “Voice 2.0″ company that just signed up its 10 millionth customer. Now, according to Smith on VoIP, JAJAH is launching JAJAH Managed Services, positioned as:

“a turnkey telephony service, with everything from network services to billing incorporated in the package.” More importantly, however, Yahoo! will be utilizing the JAJAH platform to provide voice services for their 97 million Yahoo IM users.

For managed service providers, JAJAH represents the latest opportunity to embrace and extend a telephony platform with your own custom code. Read More >

Chris Lyman is setting in the middle of a perfect storm. As CEO of Fonality, Lyman is building an IP-PBX company that leverages Asterisk (an open source platform) and embraces managed service providers. In other words, Fonality has converged three hot markets (unified communications, open source and managed services) into a single solution.

I realize that big vendors — Avaya, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, etc. — are promoting unified communications solutions. But if you’re an MSP looking to get into IP telephony, it may be hard to ignore Fonality’s value proposition. Read More >

On their own, voice-over-IP and managed services are hot markets. Toss the two together, and maybe you can fan the flames of opportunity. For instance, check out how Cistera Networks is hosting VoIP managed services for schools. Read More >

I lifted the headline for this blog entry from a presentation David Strom delivered this morning at the MSP Alliance conference in San Jose. So, what were the five disruptive technologies? Three of them were obvious, but David caught my ear with his analysis of the other two — and some timely perspective on Microsoft Small Business Server. Read More >