MSPmentor

Everon Technology Services, a managed service provider that lands regularly on the Inc. 5000 and MSPmentor 100 lists, is starting to target the hardware as a service (HaaS) market. Everon’s HaaS move is important for at least two reasons. First, it leverages a relationship with CharTec. Second, Everon is savvy when it comes to marketing and end-customer education. So Everon’s efforts and learnings could help accelerate the HaaS industry. Here’s a bit more background.

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During the ConnectWise Partner Summit, MSPmentor sat down with a range of managed services experts. In the following MSPmentor FastChat videos, we covered such topics as hardware as a service (HaaS), MSP-to-MSP collaboration, sales and business development, online marketing for MSPs and email security. Here are six FastChat videos with a range of MSP industry experts…

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Zetta, an enterprise-level cloud storage service available to managed service providers and VARs, finally leaves a long closed beta phase and becomes available to the channel at large today. Sure, online storage is an increasingly crowded market, but Zetta claims to have licked a few challenges that plague their peers. Here’s how.

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At a time when roughly 10 percent of North American MSPs are falling off the map, masterIT is on pace to have its most profitable year ever, according to Chairman and CEO J. Michael Drake. As part of our ongoing look at MSPmentor 100 companies, here’s an update on masterIT’s evolving business — including a strategy that gives customers 90 days to get hooked on managed services.

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When I visited mindSHIFT (a prominent managed service provider) on August 14, I quickly discovered the company measures everything. Pushing far beyond revenues, operating income and net income, mindSHIFT offered me a range of statistics culled from the company’s business operations. Here’s a look at some key performance milestones at mindSHIFT, and the bigger-picture implications for rival MSPs.

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Sometimes I get so tied up talking technology, I forget that managed service providers also like to talk about business basics — including public relations (PR) strategies. That was the case last week, when MSPs started asking me for some basic PR and social networking techniques during the Ingram Micro Seismic Partner Conference in Dallas. Here are the PR recommendations I shared.

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No more Mr. Nice Guy. If you’re a managed service provider targeting small and mid-market customers that have small IT staffs, here are two rather timely pieces of advice that I picked up at the Ingram Micro Seismic Partner Conference.

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During a quick video interview, masterIT CEO J. Michael Drake describes his company’s success blending managed services with hardware as a service (HaaS). Drake articulates why HaaS is more than leasing for laptops and desktops. And he offers practical tips for MSPs that want to move in a HaaS direction. The conversation was recorded at Autotask Community Live in Nashville, Tenn. Take a look.

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Want to position your company as a polished, buttoned-up managed service provider? Steal a page from J. Michael Drake and Gary Wiseman, the executives behind masterIT. Drake and Wiseman both appear in this slick, well-scripted video about their company.

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More proof that the best managed service providers are holding up pretty well during the recession: Eurodata Systems PLC, a solutions provider in London, says managed services helped the company lift profits 21.5 percent (I assume that’s 2008 vs. 2007). The 120-person company says demand for its managed services grew 17% last year, and Eurodata expects the trend to accelerate in 2009. But I think Eurodata needs to spin the story slightly differently: Executive leadership is the No. 1 reason the company is growing in a bad economy.

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As you develop your marketing, sales and PR strategies for managed services in 2009, you can embrace a range of closely related Web 2.0 technologies — blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds and so on. Which Web 2.0 technologies are right for managed service providers? Here are six tips to get you started.

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An interesting trend continues to accelerate in the managed services market: In a bad economy, it seems, smart managed service providers continue to raise the volume of their marketing messages.

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An economic crisis can be scary. But silent leadership can compound employees’ fears. Savvy managed service providers (MSPs) like masterIT, ranked No. 6 on our MSPmentor 100 list, are working overtime to communicate with their employees during these stressful times.

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Talk about timely, on-point messaging. MasterIT, one of our MSPmentor 100 companies, is hosting a “non-technical” symposium October 30 at the FedEx Institute of Technology in Memphis, Tenn.

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I’m hearing a familiar theme from multiple managed service providers: MSPs want to strengthen their branding and marketing efforts, yet local advertising firms and marketing consultants don’t understand the IT industry. As a result, local consultants who specialize in marketing aren’t very good at shaping an MSP’s brand.

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