OpenDNS Launches Cloud-Based Web Security for MSPs

OpenDNS is a fairly well-known name in the IT world, with a claimed 1% of all Internet users taking advantage of their DNS services. But what many don’t know is that for the last year, OpenDNS has provided enterprise services like web filtering and security by way of the cloud. And now they’ve packaged OpenDNS Enterprise up for MSPs, enabling them to offer SaaS web protection with the MSP’s logo on it. Here’s the scoop.

According to OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch, the new OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers offering takes all the content-filtering, phishing-scam-blocking, malware-defeating functionality of the normal product and wraps it up with a dashboard that enables management of multiple customers’ accounts. That same dashboard can also be used to delegate access and control to those customers.

Moreover, Ulevitch says a major selling point for MSPs on this offering is that OpenDNS is happy to let the partner have the spotlight with their own logo coming up front and center in customer-facing aspects of the cloud security suite. OpenDNS won’t get rid of their branding entirely, but this kind of co-branding is apparently open to MSP partners of any size.

The last advantage Ulevitch says OpenDNS gives service providers is the ability to choose their own pricing: the offering is aimed at the SMB space, and the company is offering a flat per-seat rate that scales up as the customer grows. The MSP is free to charge whatever they want on top of that.

Otherwise, it carries many of the same advantages of other cloud solutions: no hardware investment or potential incompatibilities; low TCO; predictable billing. And while the company has IT street cred, OpenDNS for Managed Service Providers certainly sounds like a thought-through solution, they’re taking on established channel-friendly companies like Websense in the same market.

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