MSPmentor

SMB Nation is gearing up for its east coast conference, scheduled for March 29-30 at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. The event will feature a managed services panel discussion led by Matt Makowicz, author of “Selling Managed Services.” Read More >

I didn’t have a chance to attend the recent SMB Nation conference in Seattle. But Larry Lentz, a Microsoft Small Business Server guru, spotted a few trends at the event — including some thoughts on manged services. You can find Larry’s observations over on his personal blog.

If cost is the biggest hurdle standing between you and a managed services practice, consider this: Autotask has launched a new, low-cost managed services platform called Autotask Go! The hosted MSP platform has a fixed fee of $99 and no start-up costs. And the user interface resembles intuitive, consumer-oriented designs (a la Quicken or Google Analytics).

According to Autotask CEO Bob Godgart, the Go! edition is designed for solutions providers with three or fewer employees. Godgart has been hinting about a potential low-cost solution for a few months, and officially announced it the SMB Nation conference in Seattle. Read More >

I just got off the phone with Autotask CEO Bob Godgart. He’s out at the SMB Nation conference in Seattle to share his managed services vision and make a few strategic announcements.

Godgart has a habit of sharing interesting factoids that a lot of people may otherwise overlook. A case in point: He’s extremely upbeat about managed service platforms converging with the mobile market. Surely, field technicians and mobile executives want to access their MSP dashboards from handhelds, smart phones and other devices.

Skeptical? Don’t be. The number of people leveraging Autotask’s LiveMobile software has doubled in the past 45 days, according to Godgart. The software’s CRM (customer relationship management) component is particularly popular, Godgart adds.

Check this site again on September 28 for more perspectives from Godgart. If you do, you’ll learn why Godgart had such a strong motivation to “go” to the SMB Nation event.

Okay, I was a little bit off with my dates. Last week, I suggested that a few low-cost managed service provider solutions would debut this week at the MSP Alliance conference in San Jose. I was half-right.

Untangle, an open source network security company, unveiled an MSP program with no up-front costs for solutions providers. But there’s more news coming. I hear that at least one — or two — MSP platform providers will use the SMB Nation event in Redmond, Wash., to unveil extremely targeted solutions for very small businesses. I’ll share more details later this week.