Seven Managed Services Blog Entries I Didn't Have Time to Write: Oct. 16

Seven Managed Services Blog Entries I Didn’t Have Time to Write: Oct. 16

Written by Joe Panettieri 1
October 16, 2009

What a week. Our bloggers have been on the road at N-able Partner Summit, Astricon, Oracle OpenWorld and Avaya’s partner conference. Lots of fantastic blogs still to be written. Here are the seven managed services blog entries I didn’t have time to write for the week ending Oct. 16.

7. Understanding Cloud Opportunities, Challenges: Get in touch with Pointivity. Keynote presentation at N-able Partner Summit generated lots of note taking by MSPs.

6. Dollars and Cents: GroundWork Open Source launches remote monitoring tool priced at $49/user/year and promotes it at Oracle OpenWorld. GroundWork also raises $5 million in series D funding. But are open source companies succeeding with low-cost price models? I’ll be watching.

5. Let’s Integrate: Tigerpaw integrates with Zenith; Roaring Penguin Software integrates with ConnectWise and works on Autotask and Tigerpaw integration; Xerox managed services integrates with N-able; Cisco call manager integrating with N-able. Wish I could keep up on all the API integration news. But be sure you test the integration before opening your wallet. Some announcements from 2009 haven’t yet delivered on their promise.

4. Seen these?: www.msptweet.com and www.vartweet.com. For now, that’s all I have to say about that.

3. HP Making Phone Calls: Hewlett-Packard officials have approached at least two MSP software providers about possible buyouts in 2009, according to those in the know. Will HP finally push beyond OpenView and buy a tool to offer to VARs and MSPs? I still don’t have an answer…

2. Who’s Winning, Who’s Losing?: Nimsoft says it had blow-out third quarter. N-able CEO Gavin Garbutt says his company is profitable. Good to hear in a difficult economy. But let’s keep the news in perspective. Some MSP software providers aren’t doing all that well, and some MSPs are closing. Only 10 percent of small businesses leverage managed services. The entire industry has to step up its game.

1. Microsoft, Most PC Vendors Miss the MSP Boat: Shockingly, PC makers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard continue to skip managed services conferences like the N-able Partner Summit. Lenovo was wise to make the trip. MSPs want to recommend the best-managed PCs and mobile devices. But most PC makers have largely overlooked the opportunity to get in front of MSPs at key conferences.

Microsoft also was missing from the N-able Partner Summit. Disappointing inaction from the software giant, since Microsoft should be telling MSPs how Windows 7 can further ease remote PC management.

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