Arrow Electronics this week announced a brand new forecasting and reporting module aimed 100 percent at MSPs. ArrowSphere xSP Central helps MSPs analyze and meter an array of license agreements from one location.
Aimed a service licenses, MSPs can “simulate and predict” what it will cost a customer to use specific cloud services.
The module works with ArrowSphere cloud services aggregation and brokerage tool. “The platform includes patent-pending metering and reporting capabilities and provides MSPs with a centralized online dashboard to generate pricing models, evaluate vendor program options, automate monthly reports and perform various analyses, such as profit threshold and capacity planning,” the company said. “The efficiencies gained through the automation of such tasks, in combination with additional ArrowSphere capabilities, enable MSPs to increase their focus on value-creation activities.”
The product, having been tested by an array of MSP partners, is now ready for rollout. And Arrow hopes it will help MSPs offer better more economical services and for their clients to save money.
One MSP is drinking the Kool-Aid. “We have been working for several years on reducing time and money spent on interpreting numerous licensing options from several vendors” said Stefan Rosenlund Nielsen, managing director, Zitcom, a leading Danish MSP. “ArrowSphere xSP Central optimizes the way we can design, monitor and improve our services to our customers and better understand our costs. We believe we gained more than 50 percent more efficiency by using xSP Central. Given these benefits, Zitcom would prefer to work only with vendors that are included in the ArrowSphere xSP Central catalogue.”
The Arrow brokerage platform, meanwhile, aims to change how cloud services are bought and sold. “We see ArrowSphere Store increasingly becoming the preferred choice for the channel to buy and resell cloud services. ArrowSphere xSP Central now allows existing and future MSPs to better design the specific technology stack they will use to provide their cloud services. It also offers software vendors the ability to recruit, enable and manage the MSP community. In less than 12 months, we have taken our ArrowSphere initiative from launch to revenue, and we will continue to invest in cloud solutions, services and dedicated resources on a global basis. We are building with ArrowSphere and its integrated modules an integrated resources management platform for all types of cloud services providers,” said Laurent Sadoun, president of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and worldwide services for Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions segment.
Training Day
Earlier this summer Arrow was chosen to be an IBM Global Training Provider supporting IBM’s Software Group and Systems and Technology Group.
The deal was no real surprise as Arrow has been distributing IBM products since 1989. And Arrow already has Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions Education, which does IT training.
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
