managed IT services news: seven blogs

7. Deeper Relationship: Level Platforms and Reflexion Networks are partnering to deliver cloud-based monitoring and reporting for hosted email security. The move reinforces an ongoing relationship between Level Platforms and Reflexion. Both companies have been involved in a Synnex relationship, which calls for the distributor to offer hosted managed services solutions to VARs and MSPs.

6. Seeking MSPs: Artisan Infrastructure has developed a rather interesting business model, offering infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to MSPs that want to manage SaaS applications on their own. The concept goes something like this: Small MSPs — say $1 million and above — don’t necessarily want to “resell” or “white label” third-party applications. Instead, many of those MSPs want to host SaaS applications on their own, but they don’t have the money to build out a cloud infrastructure. That’s where Artisan enters the picture.

Artisan CEO Brian Hierholzer tells me Artisan will “never” sell direct to end customers, nor will the company start promoting SaaS applications for MSPs to resell. Instead, MSPs can use Artisan’s infrastructure to launch their own cloud applications. I’ll share more perspectives from Hierholzer the week of Sept. 26.

5. Recurring Security Revenues: Keep an eye on Sophos, the endpoint security company — which is looking to help VARs and MSPs drive more recurring revenues. That’s all I have to say about that — at least for now.

4. European Invasion: The ConnectWise and LabTech software teams are in Europe this week, educating MSPs about recurring revenue models and business automation. I’m curious to see how many International MSPs attend the IT Nation conference, hosted by ConnectWise, in November. ConnectWise rival Autotask recently announced an international push covering six languages (in addition to English).

3. Dollars and Cents: GreatAmerica Leasing now has a real-time link into Tigerpaw Software‘s PSA (professional services automation) platform. GreatAmerica is no stranger to the managed IT services market. The company landed on our Channel Finance 25 list, which tracks lenders and financial organizations that work closely with MSPs and VARs.

2. Falling In Love: Did I mention how much I love our company’s new IT Help Desk? For the past 30 years or so, I’ve been the guy my family and friends call with technology questions and problems. I can typically answer 10 percent of the incoming questions — proving that it’s dangerous to trust my advice on technology. Over the past three week’s I’ve been calling our IT Help Desk at last twice per week. I gained access to the help desk when Penton Media acquired Nine Lives Media and our online communities. wish I could give the help desk number out to my family…

1. Another Deal Coming: A big, national MSP will make yet another acquisition the week of Sept. 26, according to a trusted source. I think it’s time for MSPmentor to take a look at 2011 acquisitions overall to see how they’re working out so far…