Managed Service Provider Week in Review

The managed services space is changing and evolving before our eyes. What used to be an amorphous and ambiguous term, the cloud, is rapidly taking shape and providing a solid foundation for delivering managed and hosted services. This week, the ground floor of the cloud stack took center stage in our news coverage as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) made headlines.

MSP Today's Doug Barney broke down "The Pluses and Minuses of IaaS" in writing about a recent survey from industry player Bluelock. The company was named a challenger in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for cloud IaaS last year. The survey covered what companies are looking for in choosing a cloud IaaS solution as well as the types of qualities they seek in an IaaS provider.

MSP Align incorporated the ServiceNow Service Automation platform into its IaaS cloud hosting solution this week and is also using the platform for its Align Managed Services solutions. ServiceNow offers enhanced service delivery and governance, ensuring Align's incident management team may respond immediately to events that could affect service levels. The platform is also being used as the basis for the IaaS solution's client service portal.

And Comstor, a business unit of Westcon Group, is gaining access to PeakColo's "Powered by Peak" IaaS offering and cloud services through a new partnership. Cloud service provider PeakColo is enabling access to their IaaS solution, powered by Cisco hardware and technology, to help expand Comstor's reach as a distributor of unified communications solutions. The company's global network of resellers will gain access to the Peak IaaS offering as well as the company's cloud services.