Multiple Startups Seek MSPs As Partners

Cloud and storage startups have been bolstering their ties to MSPs over the past couple of weeks. Some of the more recent moves involve Abiquo, OS33 and Gridstore. Here’s a closer look at each company’s most recent efforts to attract MSPs onto their platforms.

Abiquo, a cloud management software vendor, this week will unveil MSP deals with Blackmesh, BlueFire, i2k2 Networks, and Vivavo. Blackmesh is an MSP and managed hosting provider based in Herndon, Va. Bluefire, an Australian hosting and cloud services company, is part of the $4 billion Dimension Data Group. i2k2 Networks provides hosting, Web design and Internet marketing services and operates offices in India, Australia and New Zealand. Abiquo, founded in Spain, relaunched in Redwood City, Calif. earlier this year.

Meanwhile, OS33, which provides a cloud-based IT delivery automation platform, last week shed some light on its partner/client relationship with Amnet Technology Solutions, a Connecticut MSP. Amnet taps OS33 to deliver private cloud services to its customers and  attributes a 50 percent increase in its hosted IT delivery business to the automation platform, according to OS33.

In addition, Amnet is a member of OS33’s Data Center Alliance program, through which partners offer cloud-based server and storage resources to MSPs and corporate IT departments.  OS33 said Amnet, which runs colocation centers, has more than doubled its infrastructure-as-a-service revenue over the past year, selling to other MSPs.

OS33, a New York startup, spun out of an MSP.

Gridstore, which earlier this year launched its network attached storage grid solution, has locked down deals with “key MSP partners,” the company reported this week. Gridstore has been working with about 10 MSPs and plans to launch a channel program early next year.

Off hand, the new crop of relationships seem more involving that traditional vendor-VAR ties. OS33, for example, sells more than a technology platform — it’s Data Center Alliance program can help a provider do business as a master MSP.  Abiquo’s teaming arrangements, meanwhile, push its technology in new directions. BlueFire has paired Abiquo’s Enterprise Cloud Management platform with its own IP to manage BlueFire’s IaaS as well as on-premise customer infrastructure.

Perhaps the ambiguity of the cloud — where do providers’ services begin and end? — lends itself to greater collaboration.

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