Managed Services: Seven Blogs MSPmentor Didn’t Write, Jan. 25

The last few days have been a blur — but in a good way. We are gearing up to cover some major news out of Microsoft, Oracle and Parallels (among others) for the next few days. But in the meantime here are seven managed services provider (MSP) news stories and blogs that MSPmentor’s team didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending January 25, 2013.

7. I Can Hear You Now: Rob Leon, well-known within MSP circles for his previous work at inhouseIT and SpamSoap, will join FreedomVoice, a hosted PBX provider, as director of operations. Is this the latest signal that dial-tone services will shift to the cloud? And will MSPs participate? One potential answer: FreedomVoice has an Affiliate Partner Program…

6. Comfortably Numb. Abroad. Did I mention Roger Waters will be performing The Wall in Wembley Stadium on Sept. 14? Surely, there’s an MSP news hook somewhere that can drag me to London that weekend…

5. Secure Operating System: Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky is set to brief customers this week in New York. Will he offer any updates on his super-secret secure operating system project? We’ll be asking…

4. M&A:  Hargray Communications, a telecom and ILEC, is buying iTech, a managed services company. The deal could unlock new SMB opportunities — particularly in the Georgia area. We’ll share more perspectives soon.

3. Worth Watching: Parallels Summit 2013 starts Feb. 4 in Las Vegas. Cisco Systems recently invested in Parallels, which makes virtualization and cloud deployment software. I think most MSPs overlook Parallels. But that’s a potential mistake, considering scores of CSPs (cloud services providers) are building their cloud infrastructure using Parallels’ software. Most of our conference coverage will surface on Talkin’ Cloud.

2. The New Office 365: Microsoft’s next cloud move could come within days. We believe Office 365 has largely turned the corner with the IT channel, and third-party management tools like 365 Command are interesting. But will there be more SKUs for the next Office 365? Stay tuned.

1. Top 100 MSPs: Another teaser alert… We will unveil the sixth-annual MSPmentor 100 list on Feb. 14, 2013, during a webcast. In case you missed it, here is a teaser blog that offers an early peek at the data trends.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.