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HaaS: Equus Countering CharTec... and More?
3 Min Read
After 14 days on the road, it’s time to dig through my email inbox for news we’ve yet to cover. As I shake off some jet lag I notice: Equus Managed Services Solutions, which claims to be North America’s largest system builder to the channel, is launching a so-called Complete Managed Service offering to the channel. There’s an interesting twist that involves key MSP industry players: Equus, Autotask, CharTec, ConnectWise… and a whole lot more. Here’s why.
First some background to help casual MSPmentor readers connect the dots…
CharTec specializes in hardware as a service (HaaS), and received a ConnectWise Capital investment in 2010.
Frank Gurnee was VP of channel sales at CharTec from February 2003 to March 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Apparently, Gurnee shifted from CharTec to Equus Computer Systems in March 2011.
Now, Equus is launching a “Complete Managed Service” offering — including Hardware as a Service (HaaS) — at Autotask Community Live (May 22-24, Miami, Fla).
Basically, Gurnee seems to be drawing battle lines in the sand against CharTec — though I haven’t spoken with Gurnee or CharTec CEO Alex Rogers directly.
But the story doesn’t end there. Equus apparently has lined up a lengthy list of MSP industry partners — though I’m not sure if Equus merely plans to resell all the third-party solutions, or host the solutions directly. I’ll be sure to ask Gurnee at Autotask Community Live.
Lots of Partners?
According to a press release:
“As part of its partnership with Autotask, Equus is committed to providing product/service integration, education, and solutions to enhance the Autotask community…
The Equus Managed Service solution provides channel partners with a web e-commerce portal that allows easy configuration of servers, desktops, notebooks, infrastructure items, services, and peripherals in a user cart type experience. This allows managed service resellers to configure all aspects of the systems from RAM to Hard drives, to total custom configurations. All configurations are displayed with a monthly price, suggested retail price and recurring revenue profit. This advantage gives users the ability to see the profit potential of their entire service offering to their clients”
Key Equus partners apparently include:
Level Platforms for remote monitoring and management (RMM) software
Intronis for online backup
Symform for Hosted Email
Reflexion and ExchangeDefender for security and compliance solutions
I’ve got lots of questions… but too little time at the moment. Dinner and my family are calling. More perspectives soon from Autotask Community Live, starting Sunday.
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