Managed Services: 7 Blogs MSPmentor Didn’t Write, Aug. 30

Say goodbye to August 2013 (well, almost). Before our U.S. readers head out for the Labor Day holiday, here are seven managed services provider (MSP) blogs and new stories the MSPmentor team didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending Aug. 30, 2013.

7. ManageEngine: Now here’s a company worth watching, especially if you’re an MSP. I’ve received several briefings in recent months and need to roll them up into one vision-oriented blog. What makes this company unique? I hope to finally deliver that blog soon.

6. Growth Story: Egnyte, which competes in the file syncing and sharing market, is quite different than Box, Dropbox and all the other players. I had a 90-minute sit-down with CEO Vineet Jain in New York a few hours ago. Great conversation. We’ll do a longer blog soon. But here’s the upshot: Egnyte is a 170-person (roughly) company, growing fast, and they have relationships with Google (an investor), NetApp and NetGear. Not a pure cloud play, Egnyte believes file sharing and syncing will remain hybrid for years to come. More details soon..

5. Autotask’s Next Moves: VP of Product Management Pat Burns walked me through a few Autotask enhancements this week. The company is rolling out more dashboards that help MSPs to track longer-term business trends. Also, Burns shared some thoughts on mobility and the further localization of Autotask’s platform. The company and some of its rivals grew up in the PSA (professional services automation) market. But it’s clear the goal is now total IT  services business management. More soon.

4. Happy Anniversary: This week marked two years since Penton acquired Nine Lives Media and our online communities — MSPmentor, Talkin’ Cloud and The VAR Guy. Special thanks to all the Nine Lives and Penton team members who made the deal work. 

3. SaaSMax: Anybody else notice how quickly this SaaS marketplace is signing up cloud partners? More thoughts on this soon.

2. IT Monitoring at VMworld: The big VMware conference has wrapped up. Check The VAR Guy for a ton of coverage. LogicMonitor, Site24x7, Splunk and ManageEngine (among others) made announcements at the conference…

1. Big September Compliance Deadline?: I’m starting to hear from multiple cloud storage and MSP software companies about new HIPAA regulations and deadlines. It sounds like HIPAA Omnibus, which starts Sept. 23, is something MSPs better watch closely. Intronis offered some early details here. Watch closely: Datto and GFI Max — both of which have events in September — also are looking closely at the compliance market…

That’s all for now. Thanks for your readership.