MSPmentor

Until this week, Parallels was perhaps best known for Macintosh-oriented virtualization software. But that may change — starting today. The reason: Parallels has organized a major SaaS and cloud conference in Miami. Large technology companies (Cisco, Microsoft, Novell) and industry upstarts (Channel Cloud, CloudLinux, and more) are converging on the event. Here’s why MSPs better pay attention.

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This isn’t managed services news, but here’s a heads up about some fireworks occurring this morning at the Cisco Partner Summit in Boston. Within a few hours, Cisco is expected to officially announce its servers. But the louder buzz involves Cisco attacking Hewlett-Packard’s new unified communications relationship with Microsoft. The upshot: Cisco says the HP-Microsoft deal bypasses VARs and managed service providers. HP dismissed a similar, earlier claim by Cisco. You’ll find the debate on TheVARguy.com.

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AT&T Business Solutions and Verizon Business continue to polish their respective managed services strategies. It begs the question: Are the telecom giants really a competitive threat to small MSPs? I expect to find some answers later this month. Here’s why.

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Still skeptical about Apple’s iPhone for business users? I’m not. And neither is Kaseya, the managed services platform provider. After extensive testing, Kaseya’s IT department has added the iPhone to its list of supported smart phones.

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The last thing the tech world needs is another acronym. But I was rather intrigued to learn about a managed service provider that offers so-called communications as a service (CaaS). The telecom company, Cypress Communications, is successfully branding CaaS as a way to describe hosted unified communications and VoIP services to customers. Here’s how.

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I’m packing my bags and heading to the Kaseya User Conference in Las Vegas, which runs June 1-3. On the one hand, I expect to hear plenty of “Kaseya” centric news at the event. But I will also be digging deeper, meeting with managed service providers and corporate IT leaders, to hear about their experiences and learnings in the managed services market. Here are five trends or themes I’ll be exploring.

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Welcome to MSPmentor Live: Podcast edition.

• Episode #: 003 (April 24, 2008)
• Featured Guest: Bob Cagnazzi, CEO, Bluewater Communications Group, one of North America’s fastest-growing solutions providers.
• Topics Covered: Bluewater’s decision to build out its own network operation center (NOC), plus the convergence of unified communications with managed services. Bonus content describes how the iPhone will integrate with unified networks.

And check the MSPmentor Live: Podcast Center for additional weekly podcasts.

 

 MSPmentor Live: Podcast 003, Featuring BlueWater CEO Bob Cagnazzi: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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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.”

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TelePresence, the next-generation video conferencing technology, is slowly catching on with big customers. But it could be a few more years before TelePresence becomes a mainstream opportunity for managed service providers. First, the good news: Hewlett-Packard says its Halo video conferencing deployments have been doubling annually since the product’s launch in 2005, according to Reuters. And as new TelePresence systems go in, customers will need managed service providers to deliver related bandwidth optimization services.

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