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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Software as a service (SaaS) sounds so simple. But the SaaS model gets complicated when businesses depend on multiple SaaS applications from multiple companies. The big challenge: How can an organization — or a managed service provider — coordinate data between multiple SaaS clouds? SnapLogic, an open source startup, is working to address that issue. Read More >

John Roberts is sitting in the middle of the perfect storm. As CEO of SugarCRM, he leads one of the fastest-growing open source application providers. And roughly 30 percent of SugarCRM’s customer wins now involve software as a service (SaaS) or an on-demand approach — meaning the company competes with traditional CRM (Siebel) and hosted models like Salesforce.com.

I interviewed Roberts for our June 19 MSPmentor: Live podcast. We covered four key topic areas:

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The convergence of open source with managed services and software as a service (SaaS) continues. The latest example: Red Hat, arguably the world’s best-known open source company, has created two staff positions to serve hosting partners. Plus, Red Hat is evaluating a strategy to work more closely with managed service providers, MSPmentor has learned. Here’s the scoop. Read More >

For many managed service providers, hosted email represents a first foray into software as a service (SaaS). But email is a commodity these days — a nice, basic offering that pays decent dividends but won’t make you rich. If you’re looking for growing SaaS opportunities, it might be time to embrace hosted CRM (customer relationship management) or business intelligence. Here’s why.

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