Seguei Sofinski Intermedia CEO

1. Opportunities Ahead: Sofinski estimates that there are roughly 120 million legacy on-premise mailboxes running Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003. He says Microsoft support for legacy Exchange platforms is ending now or within the next three years.

2. Partner Focus: Intermedia’s private label partner-driven business grew 114 percent in January 2011 vs. January 2011. “Our mailbox growth is completely dependent on your success and your growth,” said Bob Leibholz, senior VP of sales and business development.

3. Strategic Relations: Echoworx, Mozy and LiveOffice are sponsoring the Intermedia Partner Summit. So it’s a safe bet Intermedia is working on strategic partnerships with all three companies. Sofinski also noted a growing relationship with Ingram Micro, which promotes Intermedia through the Ingram Micro Cloud and Ingram Micro Seismic business initiatives.

4. Shifting Directions: When it comes to hosted unified communications and hosted PBX services, “you spoke and we listened,” said Sofinski. He was referring to Intermedia’s decision to re-launch its hosted PBX business with Exchange support. Intermedia in mid-2010 had been promoting a home grown unified communications platform from Unison Communications. By late 2010, Intermedia had adjusted the plan to ensure ongoing Microsoft-oriented software support.

Side note: We’re trying something a bit new here at Intermedia Partner Summit. Contributing Associate Blogger Matt Weinberger will be bringing you cloud perspectives from the summit over on TalkinCloud, and Contributing Associate Blogger David Courbanou will serve up some channel perspectives over on The VAR Guy.

Sign up for MSPmentor’s Weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow us via RSS, Facebook, Identi.ca and Twitter. Check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com. Read our editorial disclosure here.