Intermedia Parter Summit: Taking VARs Beyond Hosted Exchange

Jonathan and Manlio Intermedia

McCormick was quick to detail that Intermedia‘s future plans are to provide a “best in breed product portfolio” by covering as many cloud-bases as they could. Security compliance, communication tools, and increasing mobility are key themes that customers want, partners want to deliver, and improvements Intermedia is making.

Carrelli noted that cloud acceptance is widespread and accelerating fast, but partners need some reigns to pull in the ability to capitalize on that. SharePoint, Online Backup (via Mozy), hosted PBX, conference bridge, data sync and mobility are all on the 2011 roadmap, many of them available in the upcoming months.

Consistent Message

The bread and butter of Intermedia remains Hosted Exchange. To that end, McCormick said that they’d be offering new packages with decided pricing, increased storage, and the addition of free Active Sync. Certain fees are waived for selected add-ons, and Carrelli said that ease of use for implementation and new tools were keys to success. “There’s big money being spent in Exchange migrations,” added Carrelli, and both McCormick and Carrelli encouraged partners to wrap professions services around their sales for both consulting and migration.

After Exchange, the two big pushes for Intermedia in 2011 will involve e-mail compliance and security, along with hosted PBX services. Intermedia claims that e-mail data leakage is a huge threat, second only to actual lost portable storage. Within security-heavy industries, there’s no shortage of opportunity to build out with customers, old and new. Mozy is now working with Intermedia to provide a backup backbone, automatically backing up PC and laptop data. Intermedia hopes that this technology will create sticky relationships between partners and customers, driving more recurring revenue into the channel.

Switching over to VoIP, Carrelli stressed that it Intermedia’s technology was simple, and consequently, would be ubiquitous after implementing. All a customer needs is a data pipe and existing IP phones. No phones, no problem. Intermedia’s plan is to work with SIP clients as well, from mobile phones to integrated Exchange plug-ins. Carrelli stressed that providing a professional front end that replaces a current aging system can help employees become mobile. More mobile employees means more communication, and more happy customers.

Lastly, there was a little surprise for partners at the end. Partners spoke, Intermedia listened: iPhone or Droid, Intermedia now offers partners a mobile control panel that can reset passwords, wipe lost devices, and control a plethora of common business features to help VARs manage on the goe. Strangely missing? Blackberry support. Even though Carrelli explained it was a portal app (iTunes or Google Marketplace) to a web back-end, the access will essentially be only through the app.

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