Joe Panettieri, Former Editorial Director

April 3, 2008

2 Min Read
mindSHIFT Acquires Software as a Service Specialist

mindSHIFT, a managed service provider, is pushing deeper into the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market. The company has acquired Collaboration Online, which specializes in hosted Microsoft applications.

This is the latest example of managed services converging with SaaS, and it reinforces many of the prime MSP opportunities we’ve been writing about in recent weeks — particularly hosted SharePoint, Dynamics and Exchange services.

It’s also the latest example of mergers and acquisitions within the MSP sector. (See our M&A Tracker for a list of deals.)

Here’s a bit more on mindSHIFT’s plans for Collaboration Online.

According to mindSHIFT, the Collaboration Online acquisition provides strategic value in three areas:

  1. a high-growth opportunity in the SMB market to provide a larger breadth of industry-leading enterprise-class hosted services;

  2. an automated and scalable provisioning and support platform that dramatically lowers the costs of customer acquisition and support; and

  3. a successful and mature reseller program.

The combined companies will have more than 370 employees supporting more than 2,000 customers and 60,000 seats.

So, what’s your vote: Will you push your company in the SaaS direction as well? Or are MSPs busy enough focused on traditional managed services like storage, security and patch management?

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About the Author(s)

Joe Panettieri

Former Editorial Director, Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media

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