Me and Sri were on the road for the past 2 weeks meeting our partners and gathering feedback on how they use StoreGrid to offer cloud IT services to their business customers. This is something we love doing all the time. Getting our face in front of our partners to understand where we’re right now and learn how better we can to enable our partners offer profitable backup services. One thing we learnt is that every MSP is special and their needs are unique.
We started off with Labtech Automation Nation in Orlando, FL and we met many Vembu partners and they were all very excited to know how Vembu intuitively integrated with Labtech. Check this blog for more details and fun we had at #AN13. Then a short drive from Orlando to Tampa amidst tropical cyclone Andrea pouring heavily on us. Heavy Rain, Flooding and Storm but MSPs were working as usual and we had the chance to witness the same from our MSP partner.
Given that many MSPs manage virtual environments, VMware backup has become a critical portion of their service offering and we did see great interest for StoreGrid v 4.4 VMware backup with offsite replication from Florida MSP partners. After that meet we pushed off to Atlanta, GA meeting our partners in and around that area. Traffic on 85 – North was trying to hold us back in meeting our partners but Google Navigation outsmarted it :) .
We then drove to various cities near Atlanta like Suwanee, Buford, Alpharetta etc…meeting our partners there and gathering feedback. Everywhere we go, we see a common urge amongst MSPs – ‘Protecting customer data no matter what’ and then comes the other question – “Now tell me on how I make some profit margin on backup service”. This is one reason why MSP business thrive amidst many cloud solutions available in the market as ‘Customer’ comes first before how they make money on business.
Then a flight from Atlanta, GA to Dallas, TX and from Dallas, a long drive to Austin to meet our Partners in that area. It was a 4 hour drive from Dallas to Austin and people who did that drive before must accept that it was the boring drive you ever had in your life. Just flat plain lands with constructions going on at I-35 along the drive. The only item that kept entertaining us was Sri’s iPhone which had some good music. After meeting few Partners in Austin, TX, we drove back to Dallas and took our next flight to Pittsburgh, PA. This is where we are right now blogging from the American Airlines flight from Dallas to Pittsburgh. We have plans to meet our Partners in Pittsburgh, PA tomorrow and then attending the ASCII summit event in Baltimore, MD on Thursday, June 13th. If you are near Pittsburgh, PA or Baltimore, MD in the next couple of days, please let us know through email (len AT Vembu DOT com) and we will try to meet you in person and answer any questions you might have on StoreGrid / SyncBlaze products. Our Partner meets helped us in understanding on how our successful MSPs in today’s virtualized world deliver profitable cloud based IT services to their business customers.
Will post a detailed follow up blog on the secrets of successful MSPs and kindly look forward to that.
Signing off now
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Sent from a turbulent American Airlines flight. Excuse any typo :)
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