Top 5 Disruptive Technologies for MSPs David Strom MSP Alliance San Jose (310)

(c) David Strom Inc.2 Summary Storage Security VOIP Server monitoring Instant messaging Let’s look at skills required, key vendors, and questions to ask them

(c) David Strom Inc.3 What becomes a disruptive tech most? High margins and staying that way Easy to enter ecosystems and acquire customers Recurring revenue streams and monthly annuities Close ties to customers as a trusted advisor, not just doing break/fix

(c) David Strom Inc.4 1. Storage It isn’t just about selling backup tape drives anymore Online offsite backups mature now There are numerous types of online storage and solutions abound

(c) David Strom Inc.5 Types of online storage Remote hard drives for PCs and small network backups Shared data stores for multiple users and applications Hosting large amounts of content Fully decentralized databases

(c) David Strom Inc.6 Major online storage vendors Veritas/Symantec Iron Mountain eVault Amazon.com’s S3

(c) David Strom Inc.7 Amazon.com? They just don’t sell books anymore Have a simple online storage API They are extremely cheap (cents per gigabyte per month) Major partners: JungleDisk.com, DigiSenseInc.com

(c) David Strom Inc.8 Questions to ask How many data centers and where are they? APIs documented and easy to write to? (eVault requires an NDA!) How many partners in the program and what do they sell?

(c) David Strom Inc.9 2. Security Too many different opportunities in the security space Managed firewalls is just one of them! Need to start someplace Still many SMB customers without any protection whatsoever

(c) David Strom Inc.10 Questions to ask What size network(s) are you supporting? How many remote branches? Will you do the monitoring? Does the customer need more than a firewall (wireless, VPN, anti-virus)

(c) David Strom Inc.11 Vendors to watch Sonicwall/Aventail Checkpoint Software’s SofaWare Watchguard Technologies Barbedwire Technologies

(c) David Strom Inc VOIP Opportunities Selling business VOIP is very different from consumer-grade Vendors are coming and going quickly (Sunrocket) Look what happened to Skype in mid August!

(c) David Strom Inc.13 Skills required Understand telephony and PBX systems Assess network infrastructure readiness It is all about latency and QoS! You need expertise in picking the right motherboards and setting up security

(c) David Strom Inc.14 Four ways to go Use ATA and analog phones (Vonage, Ooma) PC with headset (Skype) IP-PBX hosted (Bandwidth.com, Cbeyond.com, and even AT&T) IP-PBX on site (Linksys and D-Link offer low-end models)

(c) David Strom Inc.15 Questions to ask Who handles the ISP connection? Do I need to do all of the design and systems engineering? Who and how will do wiring upgrade? How many branch offices and telecommuters are required?

(c) David Strom Inc.16 Vendors to watch Digium’s Asterisk Microsoft Live Communications Server Cisco, but not because they have the right solutions

(c) David Strom Inc Server Monitoring New specialists in outsourced data centers Don’t actually house any servers! Don’t sell any bandwidth! Don’t sell direct to customers!

(c) David Strom Inc.18 Skills required Monitoring/patching automation tools (Microsoft System Center) VPN and remote control How to build and staff a NOC Don’t try to deliver other managed services

(c) David Strom Inc.19 Vendors to watch Clearpointe.com (Little Rock) Bedrock.com (Madison Wisc.)

(c) David Strom Inc Instant Messaging IM is becoming more mission-critical Archiving more compelling because of SOX and HIPAA Remote workers need more than and a phone Security concerns increasing because of SPIM

(c) David Strom Inc.21 Potential applications IM instead of SNMP traps for notification of critical conditions IM as “water cooler” for remote workers IM as group knowledge base or for group chats (Parlano)

(c) David Strom Inc.22 Questions to ask Who owns the IM server? How many different rooms or discussions are required? How does the product archive and search on previous conversations? How does the product interact with existing Active Directory or LDAP servers? Do you want to interoperate with public IM systems such as AOL or MSN? Can your system create rooms on the fly from one- on-one conversations?

(c) David Strom Inc.23 Vendors to watch IBM’s SameTime (now w/Eclipse!) Microsoft’s LCS Jabber JiveSoftware Parlano

(c) David Strom Inc.24 Questions?