Intermedia Partner Summit: 5 MSP Questions Worth Asking

Roughly 80 to 120 managed services providers (MSPs) are set to attend the Intermedia Partner Summit on Tuesday in New York. Most of those MSPs promote Intermedia’s hosted Exchange to end customers. But where are those MSPs heading next? I’ll be digging for answers during the conference — and posing the five following questions to attendees and Intermedia.

1. Hosted PBX: How Soon? — Intermedia has introduced a hosted PBX service that VARs and MSPs can white label and promote as their own. But how many MSPs are ready to embrace such a service… and how soon? And ultimately, what VoIP services will the MSPs include with the hosted PBX service?

2. The Microsoft Cloud Factor — Plenty of MSPs have Office 365 — the forthcoming successor to Microsoft Business Productivity Suite — on their minds. On the one hand, Intermedia is a Microsoft partner. But on the other hand, Intermedia’s channel increasingly competes with Microsoft BPOS, and those MSPs are formulating strategies to counter Office 365. What, ultimately, will the strategies entail?

3. Embrace and Extend — In addition to reselling Intermedia’s hosted Exchange service, it sounds like a large number of Intermedia channel partners are taking a look at the online backup and encryption markets. I’ll be poking around to learn how MSPs package, brand and price the extended offerings.

4. Beyond the U.S.A. — Some international MSPs will be on hand. I’m particularly curious to learn how MSPs in Europe are dealing with all the cloud hype. And perhaps more importantly, are European customers willing to entrust their email and data to an off-premise solution?

5. Got Services? — Intermedia — and other SaaS providers — are quick to say MSPs can wrap consulting services around SaaS projects. But what exactly are those services, and can the consulting services really boost an MSP’s profit margins? I hope to find some answers at the conference.

If you’re attending the event feel free to look me up: joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com. I expect to be blogging live from the event on Tuesday before hosting a cloud-related panel late in the day.

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