Interop Vegas Travelogue: MSP News in Spades, Part 4

This is the fourth and final installment of my tour of innovative companies that were present at Interop Las Vegas (click on the link for the scoop). More coverage of MSPs at Interop can be found by clicking this link. And my final thoughts on the technology event can be found by clicking this link. Let’s check out the last (but not least) group!

Shoretel

My very first appointment was with Shoretel, who showed me how they do VoIP with a mobile hook. They had a neat IP phone that used the iPad as its display and can be easily picked up and move from place to place.

Last year, TMC (News - Alert) did a video interview with VoIP vendor, and gave the company the 2012 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award.

Exinda

At the show, Exinda expanded on its network control and WAN optimization message by adding new features to its Network Optimization suite. The Exinda suite “combines WAN Optimization, Network Control and Application Monitoring into an integrated solution specifically designed to meet the growing requirements of midmarket enterprises and educational institutions,” the company said.

The suite is designed to help IT make sure that WAN SLAs are being met.

Exinda also touted the fact that Gartner (News - Alert) put the vendor in its 2013 Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers as a “visionary.”

“As basic acceleration capabilities mature, we are seeing a resurgence of interest in visibility and control, both as a means to demonstrate WOC effectiveness, and as a bandwidth/response time planning tool. Providing advanced traffic management capabilities for application and user performance measurement and SLA reporting are key emerging requirements for WOC equipment,” Gartner said.

Fiberlink/MaaS360

Fiberlink has been doing mobility management for over two decades, starting long before anyone coined the term BYOD.

The main way the company supports mobile is through its MaaS360 platform. MaaS360 helps “enterprises manage and secure all devices — desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets — throughout their entire lifecycle. For all OS platforms, MaaS360’s simple, intuitive interface, advanced analytics, and management capabilities by user, device, and application provide complete visibility and control of all mobile devices across the enterprise,” Fiberlink said.

MacAfee

For MacAfee, I escaped the show floor and head to the top floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel for a private reception with open bar, sushi, and prime rib. While washing down tuna rolls with Diet Coke, I hobnobbed with the company execs, who sell a whole heap of security wares through MSPs.

In fact, the company has been serving MSPs for over ten years and recently expanded the MSP part of its channel program to offer what MacAfee calls “a consistent global framework that can be scaled through distribution, providing partners with access to the industry’s broadest, most advanced security protection available. By bundling McAfee solutions into a partner’s existing value-added services, a MSP can become a trusted advisor to remotely monitor and support customers while maintaining control over partner branding, licensing, reporting, billing, and pricing.”

While consumers may know MacAfee for its PC security tools which often come free when you buy a new machine, MSPs know there is much more to the story. “The McAfee MSP program offers protection for endpoints, servers/networks, virtual environments, and mobile devices, in addition to the industry’s most expansive security SaaS (News - Alert) portfolio, which can all be managed centrally through either McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (McAfee ePO) software or the McAfee SaaS management console,” MacAfee explained.

KEMP

On the second day of the show I was getting tuckered. My last appointment was with KEMP, a load balancing-focused company that I know well. Now a lucky 13years old, KEMP has racked up more than 15,000 customers for application delivery and load balancing.

KEMP is most known for its LoadMaster Load Balancers that include security, SSL acceleration and Layer 7 content switching, products often favored by Microsoft shops.

Last month KEMP joined up with Dell (News - Alert) to create the LoadMaster R320 load balancer and application delivery device which is built around the Dell PowerEdge R320 server, thus the name.

There you have it! Over 20 of the most exciting and interesting companies at Interop (News - Alert). I can’t wait for the next show!