With most consumers of information technology expected to ratchet up their spending on managed services this year, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) has started a Web site intended to aid VARs and resellers figuring out whether the business model is right for their own company. Some long-time managed services advocates, like my friend Oli Thordarson from Alvaka Networks, a 25-year industry veteran who made the switch a number of years back, are even blogging there!

The site, FocusOnMSP, will feature news and research about managed services, online forums, a managed services vendor directory and case studies. But the big draw will probably be the CompTIA Managed Services ROI Tool, which is a calculator that MSPs can use in helping make sales presentations. Check it out.

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist and channel communications consultant with SWOT Management Group. You can reach her at hclancy@swotmg.com.

One of the toughest parts of being an IT writer is deciphering the press releases that vendors send out to pitch their latest products, services and partner programs.

Some are well written, informative and easily understandable. But a lot are heavy on what the Wall Street Journal recently labeled “gobbledygook“: buzzwords, run-on sentences and phrases that no human being would ever utter during the course of normal conversation.

These kinds of press releases may be OK for highly technical audiences, but a lot of times they’re confusing for the end users that channel partners deal with every day. In that spirit, here’s a sampling of some of the week’s worst offenders:

EMC
More Than 1000 Customers Select RSA Envision Platform for Business Acceleration, Feb. 12: “Given the modularity and scalability of the RSA enVision solution, the customer base ranges from large global organizations that need to manage security and compliance in complex, global IT environments, to small businesses that value the simple deployment and out-of- the box reporting capabilities.”

Red Hat
JBoss Unveils Technology Futures with New Community Projects, Feb. 14: “These projects offer sophisticated capabilities that enterprises can readily leverage to advance open source middleware into their organizations.”

Kaseya
Kaseya Empowers MSP Customer Success with New Managed Service Resource Program (MSRP), Feb. 12: “Part of the “Marketing Toolkit” element of Kaseya’s emPower Program, a comprehensive set of service offerings and support resources designed to ensure successful implementation of Kaseya’s IT Automation Framework, the company developed the MSRP as a result of its ongoing efforts to “empower” its customers to exceed expectations and effectively transition their business to the managed services model.”

Cisco
Cisco Fuels Commitment to Small and Medium-Sized Businesses in Asia Pacific with Special Solution Bundles, Feb. 12: “The collaborative platform uses Web 2.0 technology to facilitate dynamic interaction between customers and partners. … The system thus provides an efficient method of communicating with customers and employees to help improve service and increase business agility.”

Bell Micro
Bell Micro teams with Hitachi for SMB storage solutions, Feb. 7: “Hitachi’s SMS 100 is an entry-level storage system designed to fulfill the requirements of SMBs with burgeoning data growth and data protection requirements and enterprises with distributed branch offices looking for simple-to-manage storage offerings that are easy to integrate with the Microsoft Windows platform.”

The exclusive Demo conference held several times each year is usually replete with great Web concepts and technologies that won’t really be relevant for the channel for at least a year down the road. But, behold, this week’s conference boasts at least one major exception in the form of SupportSpace, an online community that (in theory) brings together VARs, resellers and managed service providers focused on providing online tech support.

Yair Grindlinger, the Israeli transplant who is Redwood City, Calif.-based SupportSpace’s CEO, says his goal with the platform is to support a community of tech-support experts who have been certified and vetted according to a set of criteria defined by the community. Mostly, they’ll help you get the word out about your managed services. Providers get ratings within SupportSpace based on prior customers’ experience. People with a problem can search by criteria such as availability, or whether or not someone is online to help them NOW. They can also pick someone based on expertise, price, cases solved, and so forth.

When I spoke with Grindlinger on Monday afternoon while he was prepping for his Demo demo, he said about 200 experts are currently registered (not bad for a company that launched basically a few days ago as I write this), although there are dozens more going through the process. The one thing I’ll give them a big thumbs-down for is that the site only supports Internet Explorer-based support experiences right now. At least that’s the message I got when I tried to engage and play around on the site a bit. Then again, I use a Macintosh, so people like this don’t usually care about me. Nothing new there.

Still, this is a concept that is likely to gain more traction, given the sad state of affairs at most corporate help desks. According to Grindlinger, you’ll see SupportSpace align itself with product vendors, for which it might wind up being a support tool; or with organizations such as Tech Support Guy. The SupportSpace community also has an open source mindset and will encourage companies with online tech support tools to add their applications to the community for experts to use. And, of course, the company wants you — VARs and resellers — to get involved in providing your own services.

I asked Grindlinger to compare his site to OnForce, the marketplace for IT services that has been the subject of much channel controversy and debate since its launch a few years back . The big difference is that OnForce is used to organize on-site engagements of all types. In fact, Grindlinger sees the two marketplaces as complementary. I agree. Likewise, both will continue to inspire loathing among resellers and VARs who fear the commodization of their high-margin services business. Guess we’ll see how both marketplace models play out.

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist and strategic communications consultant with SWOT Management Group. She can be reached at hclancy@swotmg.com.

My old, er long-time, colleague Barbara Darrow beat me to the punch about a week ago by posing 10 questions that are likely to define the businesses of every VAR, reseller, systems integrator, IT solution provider—whatever you choose to call yourself and your company—in 2008.

She was wise in taking this approach. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my more than 18 years covering this complicated business organism called the channel, it’s that most predictions any of us outsiders make will be wrong. But that won’t stop me from putting my neck out anyway. So, here goes nothing. Except I’m not going for the more obvious things I believe will be big—such as wide area wireless access and unified communications solutions. Rather, here are five trends I believe will creep up on your business in 2008. Are you planning to be surprised?

Sleeper Trend #1: Your clients will turn green-er.
Groan. I can hear you now, calling me a despicable treehugger, like my father sometimes does, and laughing at me for bringing this up. But here’s the thing: Contrary to popular belief, being green can actually save your customers money. Proof point #1: Electricity costs. There isn’t a single business in existence that isn’t worried about escalating facilities costs. The fact is, the right technology and the right technology management can help companies be more energy-efficient. So, even if you’re cynical about whether or not global warming is a myth, embrace the ethos of energy-efficiency. It’ll impact all sorts of things you represent—from virtualization technology to storage to unified communications.

Sleeper Trend #2: Software as a service will quietly gain more converts, especially among small businesses.
Sometimes I think solution providers don’t channel their own experiences as small-business owners into ideas that could serve their own clients. I talk to enough entrepreneurs to know that one thing in particular colors how they look at technology: their need to work from anywhere at any time. What does that mean? For one thing, data synchronization is ultracritical for small-business owners. That is, they want to get to the latest revisions of files from home, from hotels and from their office. They don’t so much care whether their spreadsheet lives on their computer or off on a server somewhere just so long as the information they need is always available. I won’t even pretend to have market statistics on this, but I’d be willing to bet that pretty much any business that is willing to host its e-mail service elsewhere will look at hosted versions of their other applications, especially if it’s less expensive. Small businesses care less about hype and more about whether or not something works. So, do I think all the software as a service companies will come up with channel programs? I DO think that Salesforce.com and NetSuite will continue to flirt with partners, but they’ve got a long way to go. What it DOES mean is that the case for big software upgrades from established software developers, including Vista, will continue to be hard to make.

Sleeper Trend #3: Apple technology will continue to backdoor its way into the business world.
I’ve been reading all sorts of articles and analysis reports lately about the iPhone and its effectiveness as a business tool. I can tell you firsthand that it wasn’t designed to be all that easy to use with corporate e-mail and calendaring accounts, but there are workarounds. Here’s another telling stat: During the third quarter, Apple was expected to ship about 1.34 million Macintosh PCs, or about 8.1 percent of all systems shipped in the quarter. There is still a substantial gap between Apple, and Dell and Hewlett-Packard in this regard. However, Apple’s shipments grew more than 37 percent year-over-year. And, it’s worth noting that its shipments during the quarter were higher than Toshiba, which just introduced a series of new notebooks. Certainly, corporate accounts still frown on Apple, but small businesses and midsize companies are more willing than ever to consider the alternative.

Sleeper Trend #4: People will get smarter about what data and files they store.
The more I learn about storage software, the more I marvel about its potential to make our life easier—if we would only use it properly. I believe that data deduplication will become a mantra that is used as often in 2008 as compliance was 18 months ago. Both humans and storage systems could stand to be more efficient about what data is kept and how it is catalogued. There’s something to be said for librarians. Heck, maybe the field of library science can jump in here and help us.

Sleeper Trend #5: Someone, somewhere WILL find a way to solve the ridiculous spam deluge that wastes so much of our collective time.
It’s one thing to manage incoming e-mail on a high-speed corporate network. It’s another thing, entirely, to have to wade through dozens of junk messages on a wireless handheld device just to get what you need. While I don’t know who has the answer right now, you can bet that the second someone comes up with a truly effective spam filter that lets all the right stuff through and prioritizes it, we’ll hear about it. Better yet, why don’t YOU come up with the solution and please let ME know about it as quickly as possible.

What do you think will creep up on you in the New Year? Share your thoughts and comments via e-mail at hccollins@mac.com.

Heather Clancy is a business journalist and communications consultant who has been covering the high-tech channel for more than 18 years.

Howard Diamond, who has been CEO and chairman of ePartners, is relinquishing the CEO post.  Michael McCarthy has been promoted from president to CEO, according to  a  company statement posted last week. 

It was unclear from that release whether Diamond would remain chairman. A spokeswoman was unsure about the chairmanship.

McCarthy and Diamond have worked together for years, at the old Corporate Software and then at Level 3 Communications, which bought Corporate Software in early  2002. A few months later, Level 3-with Diamond-snapped up Software Spectrum, another big LAR, and merged its operations with those of Corporate Software.

At one point, Corporate Software was the largest of the Large Account Resellers or LARs selling Microsoft, Lotus and other software to big  companies. Software Spectrum was one of its biggest rivals.

Diamond has been chairman and CEO of ePartners since 2005 when he came out of retirement to manage  the merger of EYT and ePartners, two large Microsoft Business Solutions partners.

Howard has been an articulate champion of the value that software partners can bring customers. For example, last year he spoke to me about how ePartners derived the bulk of its revenue from its own customization and specialization work atop the Microsoft stack, not from reselling the stack components themselves. As we all know, those margins are mighty thin.

In this age of Web-enabled software distribution, it’s more  important than ever that software partners continually build and bolster their vertical and domain expertise.

In other words, don’t rely on your vendor partners to provide you with the margins needed for survival. They’re fighting the same battles you are, so if you want a friend, get a dog. If you want to survive, make sure your value stays current and, well, valuable!

Barbara Darrow, a Boston-area reporter, can be reached at badarrow@comcast.net. 

At last, someone at NetSuite (or maybe Oracle) has figured out that Larry Ellison’s stake in NetSuite is the conflict-of-interests outsiders have been flagging for years.

According to recent NetSuite filings, Oracle CEO Ellison will put his NetSuite shares into a “lock box” to be managed by a third party.

 The whole Oracle-NetLedger-NetSuite dance has been complex from the get-go.

Ellison funded the startup, then called NetLedger in 1998. Oracle at that time was primarily a database player and concentrated on large enterprise accounts. NetSuite’s fledgling online financial software consisted of applications for smaller companies.

Oracle itself then re-sold the resulting NetLedger product/service into SMB accounts. However, as Oracle launched a serious SMB attack on its own and spent billion-upon-billion (upon billion) to buy more applications, it was quickly apparent –at least to most of the sentient world–that Oracle’s own products were competing with NetLedger (by now NetSuite).

It was not unlike the “frenemy” situation between Oracle and Salesforce.com, the pioneering CRM SaaS player. Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff was a former Oracle exec and Larry protégé. Ditto NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson. Ditto, for that matter, NetSuite tech guru Evan Goldberg. Goldberg and Ellison co-founded Net Ledger in 1998.

Given Oracle’s apps hunger, there was lurking suspicion that Oracle may end up buying a Larry Ellison company. Yet another complication, especially as NetSuite keeps trying to go public. Several NetSuite partners (who also happen to be Oracle partners) have been wondering about this ownership situation for some time. Most shrugged it off as one of those Larry-being-Larry things.

Barbara Darrow, a Boston area freelancer, can be reached at badarrow@comcast.net.

Been prepping this week for a presentation I’m giving on behalf of my colleagues at channel consulting firm SWOT Management Group to Oki Data’s solution provider advisory council (full disclosure on where my head is right now). So thinking quite a bit about printing and imaging. I know: Probably not your usual fare here at SearchITChannel.com.

In my days as a reporter, printers were, quite frankly, a bit overlooked as a coverage area. That is, until marvelous inventions like Adobe PostScript promised to pull these peripherals squarely onto the network and into the workgroup realm. The latest wave of innovation began when features from the office equipment world began to creep over—management software, scanner support and the like. In reality, if you sit back and mull the technology over a bit, today’s printing and imaging segment is one of those practice areas that could be a very logical, practical extension to your existing infrastructure practices in storage, security and collaboration.

Let me explain.

First, some market statistics. Gartner reported fairly recently that U.S. shipments of printers and copiers declined 4 percent in the second quarter. That is, printer sales declined 15 percent, but purchases of flatbed multifunction peripherals (MFPs) grew 19 percent compared with the second quarter of 2006. The color-enabled portion of this market is growing at a rate of 29 percent year over year, according to another market researcher, IDC. A related area, document scanners, is also posting respectable growth. Here’s some thoughts from market research company InfoTrends on the role of scanners. The transition to digital fax machines, of course, started happening years ago.

In my opinion, there are several dynamics driving this growth: new forms of business collaboration, as illustrated by software platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint; compliance regulations that dictate better document management policies and strategies; and the rise of Web 2.0-related portals that have made the job of managing content in both electronic and printed forms a whole lot more onerous. Of course, price points for MFPs have simply made the investment in these devices more worth it.

So how does this relate to something like storage? Think of printing and imaging as the front-end to the document management and workflow applications that have been slowly finding their way into business continuity and back-up solutions. You could even tie together a start-to-finish managed service: one that starts with an MPF, links into the appropriate software and archives accordingly, as business conditions dictate.

Similarly, protecting these documents with some sort of digital signature or encryption methodology could be a concern of your data security practice.

The fact that there are really no “standard” ways of handling documents, that every company’s workflow and retention strategy is probably slightly different, that this entire process really could benefit from ongoing management and services . These things make a printing and imaging solution look a lot more like an infrastructure practice than a commodity PC sale. Have you been thinking about it that way?

Symantec continued its services push today by boosting its managed security services (MSS) with bot protection.

MSS customers will receive the added protection free with their current subscriptions, which provide real-time monitoring and threat response. Symantec says its latest Internet Security Threat Report found, over a six-month period, more than 5 million computers infected with bots — programs that can spread malware from computer to computer and grant remote access to unauthorized users.

Much of Symantec’s focus lately has been on managed services and Software-as-a-Service (Saas). Its upcoming SaaS platform, Symantec Protection Network, was on the minds of many value-added resellers (VARs) at last month’s Partner Engage conference, where Symantec executives reassured them that the channel will play a big part in services. The first SaaS offering, Online Backup Service, is due later this year.

Symantec’s services push is an attempt to attract more small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers and also to keep its lead in the emerging Symantec vs. Microsoft security battle.

Microsoft let another shoe drop Monday in its “software plus services” take on software-as-a-service

First it announced a free service, with the catchy name Microsoft Office Live Workspace. This will let users securely access their stored online documents and files from anywhere. Users can pre-register now for the beta. Those documents and files will be stored by Microsoft.  And the Groove technology Microsoft acquired along with Ray Ozzie’s Groove Networks a few  years back will presumably be the mechanism for working with those documents off line.

 The company was careful in its announcement to differentiate between this with its pre-existing Office Live service for small businesses which is now dubbed -you guessed it-Office Live Small Business. The company claims 450,000 users.

Also new, but  hardly unexpected, is Microsoft hosted SharePoint, or Office SharePoint Online.  To be clear, the aforementioned Office Live Small Business also uses Sharepoint as a foundation.

Again, solution providers, especially those who host technologies for small businesses have to watch these developments carefully.  While one side of Microsoft wants partners to host applications on Microsoft foundations, another increasingly important group maintains that Microsoft itself must host a wide array of services for consumers and small businesses to combat the threat from Google and cool offerings from Zoho.

Solution providers working with enterprises had better also keep their eye on the company’s growing array of managed services. Microsoft Managed Services now include hosted Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Live Communications Server.

While Google, which has blazed the trail for lean online apps for consumers and now some business people, has not had to worry about alienating its partner base, the same cannot be said for Microsoft, which must tread a fine line here.

As Ozzie  himself said when he was named to his lofty role , Microsoft  is being forced to change, just as its partners must change.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Barbara Darrow, a Boston-area freelance journalist can be reached at badarrow@comcast.net.

As the MSPAlliance kicked off its fall managed services conference in San Jose, Calif., the organization announced the launch of its vendor accreditation program (VAP) for the managed services industry.

Designed by MSPs as a benchmark for vendors who sell to the MSP community, vendors that earn the VAP seal will have shown that they have positive channel practices, product research and development, financial stability and MSP customer satisfaction.   

“It is a benchmark system for MSPs to evaluate vendors,” said Charles Weaver, president of the MSPAlliance. “Vendors entering the program must have at least three MSP specific references and it’s basically a seal of approval for those vendors who have a specific interest in selling to the managed services global community,” Weaver added.   

Among those that have received accreditation under the new program are: Intel, SilverBack/Dell, Asigra, Untangle, XRoads Networks, LiveCargo and N-able.