Live Virtual Help Desk: Channel Partner Moves Coming
Live Virtual Help Desk, which offers Help Desk and NOC services to VARs and MSPs, appears to be building relationships with Arrow Fusion (the cloud arm of the IT distributor) and ThinkGrid (a cloud services company that enables the IT channel).
MSPmentor has yet to confirm any of the alleged relationships but the grapevine sounds accurate. Both potential moves are worth watching for a range of reasons. Roughly 73 percent of top MSPs offer NOC services, according to our fifth-annual MSPmentor 100 report, which debuted Feb. 15. Some of those MSPs keep NOC services in-house; others outsource NOC and/or help desk services to companies like Live Virtual Help Desk.
Meanwhile, IT distributors are looking to build closer relationships with NOC and help desk providers. Ingram Micro, for instance, has a longstanding relationship with NetEnrich. Now, Live Virtual Help Desk sounds poised to build a potentially similar relationship with Arrow Fusion. Plus, I’ve heard rumblings that Avnet Technology Solutions may also be seeking NOC and help desk partnerships.
So the lines between distributors, NOC providers and help desk providers are blurring just a bit. Assuming Live Virtual Help Desk and its rivals can continue to scale their operations, MSPs seem to have a growing list of outsourced NOC and help desk options.
I can confirm that we are now working with both Arrow Fusion and ThinkGrid. We are pleased to continue our growth through fantastic strategic partnerships.
We are also very excited about our existing partnerships with Chartec (Can Alex sell or what!),Labtech, Virtual Administrator, Packet Trap and others.
We are gaining ground on our goal to move towards pure distribution, maintaining a heavy focus on the VAR/MSP market and growing our mid-market and enterprise channels.
We would like to say a truly heartfelt “Thank you” to all of our valued partners at the Distribution, VAR, MSP and end-user level. You are all so very appreciated and we will continue to deliver the best service we can!
Stay tuned as there is more news on the horizon!
Dan,
Thanks for the confirmation as well as the background on the additional partnerships in place. Keep us posted as the Arrow and ThinkGrid relationships ramp up.
-jp
Dan and the crew at LVHD rock! I’ve never heard so many positive things about a help desk. Thet are one worth watching!
This is great news for Dan and the team at Live. Many of my partners are working with Live VHD and are very happy. I remember just a couple years ago they were brand new and now they are the act that others need to run to keep up with. Dan and his team are setting the bar for help desk services. I am proud to be able to work with them and thrilled for all of their success.
Stu
We’ve been working with Dan amp; gang for a little over two years now and have had nothing but positive feedback from both our partners and staff. Dan always goes the extra mile for his partners and alliances and has been a pleasure to work with.
Onward and upward for LVHD!
Mike
ThinkGrid is proud to partner with LiveVHD and we have now concluded our training with them on the ThinkGrid hosted desktops and related infrastructure (see: http://www.hvdi.com for videos of the newest desks.)
The combination of LiveVHD and ThinkGrid will allow MSPs to scale their business to go after larger deployments that might have been out of territory or out of scale previously.
As the demand for hosted desktops continues to accelerate (ThinkGrid has grown rapidly and is up to 12 data centers around the world now) it is crucial to have the 24/7 call center support, application patching, and environment monitoring available for a monthly fee, when required.
We have been the only channel-exclusive cloud platform provider for over 3 years and we did not want this to threaten our existing MSP reseller partners. I am pleased to report that the MSP partners have responded favorably to the addition of LiveVHD and see it as a way to scale their business to new growth.
We are thrilled with Dan and Company and will be making their services available to MSPs as an optional offering via the control panel and to resellers (VARs/LARs) at Tech Data, Ingram Micro, etc.
Mark, Stuart, Mike: Thanks for your continued insights on ecosystem partners.
Gregg: I’d like to hear more about how ThinkGrid is working with MSPs. Reach out anytime.
joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com
In general help desk is a service that is exceeding hard to do well. Lot’s of companies try to do it and very few are good at it.
I have known Dan and the Live Virtual Help Desk team for years. During that time I have had the opportunity to talk with literally hundreds of MSPs about building their service offerings. Live Virtual Help Desk is consistently viewed as the best offering going.
Mitchell Cipriano
http://www.demandbydesign.com