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Memo to Lenovo, Kaseya: Partner (More) Right Now
Lenovo and Kaseya both are hosting partner conferences this week in Las Vegas. It's an ideal time for Lenovo and Kaseya to take their managed services software partnership to the next level. Here's how.
2 Min Read
It's time for Lenovo Channel Chief Chris Frey and his Kaseya counterparts to take their managed services partnership to the next level, MSPmentor believes.
Kaseya and Lenovo each are hosting partner conferences this week in Las Vegas. At the same time, Lenovo is said to be negotiating to buy IBM’s x86 server business. Add up all the evidence, and it’s the perfect time for Kaseya and Lenovo to partner even more deeply on managed services. Here’s what the duo should do together next.
Thousands of managed services providers (MSPs) use Kaseya’s software to proactively maintain notebooks, PCs and servers. Lenovo, meanwhile, has frequently positioned its hardware as well-designed for MSPs to remotely manage.
Much of Lenovo’s MSP push occurred back in 2010 or so, before SMB channel expert Jay McBain moved on to join Autotask and then ChannelEyes. The early Lenovo effort included a server that was purpose-built for MSPs. Lenovo has also been active in Intel’s Hybrid Cloud Strategy, and the company has done work with Kaseya (and other RMM providers) since early 2010.
But overall, I think Lenovo’s MSP focus has been hit and miss. You don’t really hear about MSPs betting their businesses and corporate endpoints on Lenovo ThinkPads and ThinkServers.
Next (Potential) Moves
So what would I do?
First, have Kaseya Chief Marketing Officer Bob Davis and Lenovo Channel Chief Chris Frey sit down in a room together to hash out the possibilities. Davis and Frey are at their respective events. I suspect a GPS would show them less than one-tenth of one mile from each other right now.
Invite Intel’s Eric Townsend to join the conversation. An ultrabook and MSP expert, Townsend is the rare IT channel source who understands emerging endpoint form factors and managed services software. In short, he can tell Kaseya and Lenovo where to work together more aggressively. Townsend, I believe, is in Las Vegas right now…
Have Kaseya keep a close eye on Lenovo’s potential buyout of IBM’s x86 server lineup. Of course, neither IBM nor Lenovo can discuss the potential deal. But MSP software providers should be white boarding potential opportunities now.
Explore new ways to help MSPs manage the BYOD trend. Sure, Kaseya offers mobile device management (MDM) software. But I think the bigger trend involves app management…
Find ways to make MSP-oriented software far easier to activate each time a customer deploys a new Lenovo endpoint or server.
Also keep an eye on the Lenovo-EMC partnership. Surely, MSPs can cash in on big storage deployments that need external management.
Perhaps I’m stretching the point a bit. But Lenovo and Kaseya are essentially in the same neighborhood this week. There’s no excuse not to raise the cross-company partnership to the next level.
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