Seven Managed Services Blogs MSPmentor Didn't Write: March 18

Seven Managed Services Blogs MSPmentor Didn’t Write: March 18

Written by Joe Panettieri 1
March 21, 2011

There's nothing like procrastinating -- just a little longer than usual. Here are seven managed services blogs the MSPmentor team didn't have a chance to write for the week ending March 18, 2011.

There’s nothing like procrastinating — just a little longer than usual. Here are seven managed services blogs the MSPmentor team didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending March 18, 2011.

7. New Directions: It has been nearly 100 days since Mark Cattini joined Autotask as CEO and Lenovo SMB channel veteran Jay McBain joined as Senior VP. It’s clear some new moves will be announced at Autotask Community Live (May 22-24, Miami, Fla.). But how are Cattini, McBain and the established Autotask team members evolving the company’s SaaS strategy? We expect to have some updates pretty soon…

6. Talent Pool: It sounds like NetEnrich is ready to make more strategic hires as Senior VP/GM Justin Crotty prepares to launch a “closet to cloud” initiative for VARs and MSPs seeking IT as a service.

5. Next Move(s): PacketTrap MSP, owned by Quest Software, apparently is preparing version 6.0 of its managed services software. The move comes as Quest continues to diversify its offerings to VARs and MSPs, including a growing emphasis on SaaS deployment software and virtualization assistance.

4. Deadline Approaches: The Talkin’ Cloud 50 survey, which tracks the top 50 VARs and MSPs working in cloud computing, will end on March 31. Results of the survey, including profiles of the top 50 solutions providers focused on cloud computing, will surface in Q2 2011.

3. New Key to Security?: SpamSoap, a McAfee partner focused on SaaS security and anti-spam, apparently is preparing some sort of encryption effort. Similarly, Intermedia — the hosted Exchange specialist — announced an encryption push last week.

2. Answering the Call for Help: The Help Desk Institute conference is March 29 through April 1 in Las Vegas. I’m curious to know if MSPs attend the conference to research help desk strategies. I will be in Las Vegas for the HP Americas Partner Conference and may swing by the HDI conference to learn more…

1. Poking Around: Symantec seems to be poking around the managed services software market again. I’ve heard rumors on and off for about a year that Symantec wanted to buy its way into the MSP software space. But I can never quite nail down deeper details…

That’s all for now. Thanks for your readership. All of us here at Nine Lives Media Inc. truly enjoy the dialog with you.

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4 comments

Lane Smith March 21, 2011 @ 3:13 pm

Reply

We will have someone at the HDI conference. We leverage their training and certification programs for all of our help desk analyst. We also leverage their Customer Satisfaction Index as a 3rd party customer sat survey for all of our incidents.
Joe Panettieri March 21, 2011 @ 3:16 pm

Reply

Lane: Generally speaking does the HDI event attract VARs and MSPs or is it mostly an end-user/corporate IT event? I might swing by the afternoon of March 29… Keep me posted. Thanks.
-jp
Lane Smith March 21, 2011 @ 9:47 pm

Reply

Joe,

I have never attended the conference personally so I am not certain. From what I have seen though their focus is more on the end customer not the channel. I will get you an update after the event.

Lane
Joe Panettieri March 22, 2011 @ 12:53 pm

Reply

Lane, I plan to check it out late Tuesday. Thanks for your thoughts and safe travels.
-jp