Within Microsoft’s Q3 2013 earnings results (announced today), the company said Office 365 is now a $1 billion cloud business (using annual run rate figures). I’m not suggesting all MSPs (managed services providers) need to run out and start an Office 365 consulting and deployment practice. But you at least need an educated response as more customers begin to ask you about cloud suites from Microsoft, Google and others.
Tag Archives: Cloud Computing
At this week’s OpenStack Summit, I ran into Rob Bissett — a familiar name in the managed services provider (MSP) market. Bissett is VP of product management at 6fusion, which makes a cloud metering platform. He previously was at N-able Technologies, which develops MSP-oriented software. Most of our OpenStack coverage surfaced on Talkin’ Cloud, MSPmentor’s sister site. But should MSPs be watching the open source cloud platform as well? I’ll offer a qualified “yes.” Here’s why.
A price war may be brewing in the commodity cloud services space. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has announced the launch of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services and pledged to compete with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Web Services (AWS) on priceblog post that Microsoft wants to deliver both low price and good performance in one package with virtual machine and cloud services prices cut by 21 percent to 33 percent. Here’s a deeper look.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office U.S. Commercial Business Director Julie Sanford pitched Microsoft 365 to a room full of value-added resellers (VARs) and vendors at Synnex 2013 Spring Varnex Conference in Orlando, Fla. earlier this week, but also added some key takeaways for managed services providers (MSPs). Where is Microsoft now compared to where it was three years ago? Where is there a prime upgrade opportunity for partners? We’ll reveal the answers, along with other snippets from the conference.
independenceIT and N-able Technologies are converging the worlds of cloud services and managed services. From a single dashboard, MSPs running both platforms will soon be able to manage hosted desktops as well as traditional on-premises IT equipment. Early adopters will likely include masterIT, an MSPmentor 501 company. Here’s the background, including insights from independenceIT Executive VP Jim Lippie.
Looking for a new email security and filtering solution following Google‘s (NASDAQ: GOOG) retirement of Postini? Enterprise email filtering and security vendor Proofpoint (NASDAQ: PFPT) wants to talk to you. The 11-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif. company is taking its solutions to new markets including telecos and managed service providers. Seeking market expansion, and seeing the stars align as Google (which had never pleased the channel with its Postini moves) announced the retirement of its Postini email filtering and security last year, Proofpoint has recently moves to optimize its offering for managed service providers, Andres Kohn, VP of technology at the company (pictured) told MSPmentor. The result is a cloud-based multi-tenant-capable software as a service solution for filtering, monitoring and securing email with utility-based pricing comparable to Postini. This version of Proofpoint’s solution will be 100 percent channel, he said. Here are the details.
Virtualization management provider HotLink Corp. recently added Amazon EC2 plug-in support for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to the latest release of HotLink Hybrid Express, the company’s hybrid cloud management software. Managed services providers (MSPs) now have the ability to deploy, administer and manage hybrid on- and off-premise resources using existing virtualization management infrastructure through the solution. Here are the details.
MSPmentor 501 company Logicalis is reaching out to lend its expertise, business relationships and financial muscle to help other managed service providers grow. The goal is to work with those who have achieved a certain degree of success but have found themselves stuck as they struggle to get to the next level in a fast-moving market. To help these companies achieve an expansion of their businesses, Logicalis has introduced M.E.E.T. or MSP Expert Extension Team. MSPmentor spoke with a couple of Logicalis executives helping to spearhead the initiative, Julie Spiller (pictured), director of IBM Data Center and Cloud Services and Wayne Kiphart (pictured), VP of managed services at Logicalis. Here are the details.
IT management software provider ScienceLogic Inc. has extended its existing solutions to support hybrid cloud monitoring and management in the latest release of ScienceLogic Smart IT platform. The update specifically targets ScienceLogic Power-Packs that provide smart monitoring policies that are highly automated for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware vCloud Director. Which new featues have been added to ScienceLogic v7.3 for MSPs? Here are the details.
IT systems management platform provider Kaseya is extending beyond its existing on-premise solutions portfolio through a new set of software-as-a-service (SaaS) IT tools. The tools will be offered in both free and subscription license versions. These five new tools are in addition to the company’s SaaS bundle, Kaseya Essentials. Here’s the scoop.