Thrive Networks: Managed Services Growth Continues

Thrive Networks, the managed services business owned by Staples, continues to see double-digit growth in the services market. Some of that growth can be traced back to Thrive Networks' relationships with Axcient and SonicWall, which power the MSP's backup and disaster recovery (BDR) and managed firewall services.

According to Thrive Networks President Jim Lippie, the organization's services revenue is up about 10 to 12 percent in 2011. More than 100 customers now leverage Thrive's BDR and managed firewall services. Thrive Networks, acquired by Staples in 2007, typically services small businesses with 10 to 250 users. The company has customers in 18 states -- though that figure will likely grow as Thrive Networks builds out a ThriveCloud initiative, explained in the FastChat Video below:



Thrive Networks, an MSPmentor 100 company, leverages longstanding relationships with Kaseya (since 2005), N-able Technologies (2002) and ConnectWise (2004) within its managed services practice. While most MSPs may see overlap between the Kaseya and N-able offerings, Thrive Networks sees them as complementary offerings for remote monitoring, management and IT automation.

On the business front, the Thrive Networks management team "is strong and has been here for a long time." But Thrive Networks does have positions open, particularly in engineering -- where the company wants to accelerate a cloud services push for 2012.