Managed Service Provider Week in Review

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) topped the managed services headlines this week, with a number of interesting announcements and research being unveiled. Also, more and more MSPs are striking deals with telecom carriers and other service providers as the sector continues to define itself and come up with unique service niches.

MSPToday writer Rory Lidstone examined the reality of cloud-to-cloud backup in the SaaS world, looking at a new report from Forrester Research that forecasts companies will be using 66 different SaaS apps by 2015. In an interview with the CEO of Backupify, he discussed some of the reasons for cloud data loss as well as the company’s business of providing backup and recovery solutions for SaaS apps.

In other interesting SaaS news, Accelrys has rolled out a new SaaS-based information management and collaboration workspace. The new offering, called ScienceCloud, is designed for the pharmaceutical industry and offers a new approach for researchers using a scalable, cloud-based scientific platform. The solution will let researchers access research data, experiments, chemical structures, assays and test results quickly and efficiently.

In partnership news, Irish MSP Jinny Software announced a multi-year managed services agreement to provide messaging platforms to CWI Caribbean Limited (LIME). Jinny will be delivering and managing the Jinny SMSC, Messaging Gateway and Filtering engine for the wireless carrier. The MSP will also provide the Jinny Cloud MMSC service, enabling LIME to offer secure messaging services to its subscriber base throughout the Caribbean Islands.

A new Hadoop-as-a-Service (HaaS) partnership has been formed between cloud operator Carpathia and Altiscale. The companies are offering Altiscale’s purpose-built Apache Hadoop Cloud as a service to enterprises, government agencies and SaaS providers. The offering helps customers enhance their large-scale data processing capabilities.

And Australian MSP Applaud has become a VAR for Nimble Storage as well as part of the company’s partner network. Applaud will resell hybrid arrays from Nimble through the arrangement, and will also make technical training, professional services and post-sales support from Nimble available.