Interesting articles in the news today:

Channel Insider — What IT Leaders are Whispering in Budget Meetings: IT organizations slimmed down their spending in 2009, but are looking to make some strategic IT investments in 2010. What characterizes these investments is that they will provide some cost-cutting or other value to the overall business, according to a new survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by Accenture. Here’s an inside look at what’s going on inside IT organization budget meetings as IT leaders look ahead to next year’s strategic initiatives…

Redmond Channel Partner — Partner Hosting Still Has a Future: Long the subject of benign neglect, the Services Provider License Agreement has been rejuvenated in the last year with significant program changes.

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Check out what others are saying about our hosted Exchange 2010 reseller program launch:

“With Intermedia, I can offer clients Exchange 2010 with a 100 percent Data Protection Guarantee, giving me an edge over competitors that offer only Exchange 2007,” says Etorre Dragone, president, Micro Technology Groupe. “I’m always looking for new solutions to help me expand my customer base – Exchange 2010 is definitely one that will help me close more deals with new prospects. Intermedia has proven to be a leader and a valued partner that focuses on offering us the latest in technology, security and reliability so that we can have best-of-breed offerings for our customers.”                      

Find out more about our Exchange hosting reseller program here.

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We just launched our industry-first hosted Exchange 2010 service to our existing and future partners. These managed service providers, value-added resellers and other technology providers can sell and support hosted Exchange 2010 under their own brand as members of Intermedia’s Private Label Partner Program.

We launched the first hosted Exchange 2010 service on November 9 and remain the only provider of hosted Exchange 2010. The service includes a 100 percent Data Protection Guarantee in addition to Intermedia’s longstanding 99.999 percent uptime service level agreement. We are able to credibly offer the Data Protection Guarantee, which is enforced by stiff financial penalties, because of the proprietary architecture we developed to work with hosted Exchange 2010.

Check out the hosted Exchange 2010 reseller news here.

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Four months after expanding our hosted Exchange reseller partner program to Latin America we are pleased to announce today that we signed several key private label partners and affiliates in the region, including Solosoft – the Bogota, Columbia-based systems integrator – and Soto Networks, a managed service provider based in Venezuela. Soto Networks immediately posted a 1,000-seat hosted Exchange account.

Check out our news release: http://www.intermedia.net/about-us/news/press/2009/growth-in-latin-america.asp

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New article by Intermedia COO, Jonathan McCormick, launched on eWeek today.

How to Ensure SAAS Providers Are Truly Protecting Your Data

From how to ensure SaaS providers are truly protecting your data to infrastructure requirements – Jonathan discusses it in the article.

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First 100% Data Protection Guarantee in Exchange Hosting Industry: Intermedia pushes industry toward greater operational and technical transparency

Today we announced that our hosted Exchange 2010 service includes a 100 percent Data Protection Guarantee. The public guarantee is a first among top software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers and is designed to give customers and partners full confidence that their business-critical data is safe with Intermedia.  

“Whenever organizations entrust their data to a third-party, whether via a cloud computing service or a traditional outsourcing arrangement, it’s important to evaluate the vendor’s technical and operational capabilities to fully protect the data,” says Jeffrey M. Kaplan, managing director of analyst firm THINKstrategies and founder of the SaaS Showplace. “We recommend businesses carefully evaluate the vendors’ ability to verify they have the proper back-up and recovery systems as well as the policies in place to safeguard their records, such as Intermedia’s Data Protection Guarantee.”

“The cost of data loss to a business is too great not to be protected 100 percent,” says Jonathan McCormick, chief operating officer, Intermedia.  “Intermedia guarantees not only the reliability of our service, but the complete safety of our customers’ data. Our customers can have peace of mind knowing that their data and communications are protected from any eventuality.”

Click here to read the news release.

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With the launch of hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010,  Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the third in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “Why You Should Consider Migrating to Hosted Exchange 2010” by Osterman Research, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.  

Not all hosted Exchange providers are created equal.  There are often important distinctions between even leading vendors, and so decision makers should evaluate providers based on their specific requirements.  Here are some of the key issues to consider when evaluating providers of hosted Exchange services.

MULTIPLE DATA CENTERS

Does the provider operate multiple data centers?  If so, are these data centers served by multiple, Tier 1 Internet providers?  These are important considerations for disaster recovery purposes, but they can also permit greater levels of uptime compared to a provider that operates only one data center or that does not use highly available Internet providers.

Further, the use of multiple data centers allows the use of a data center that is geographically closer to users and so can provide better messaging system performance.  Related to this is the ability to specify which data center serves which mailboxes, something that not all hosted Exchange providers offer.

THE PROVIDER’S TRACK RECORD

The provider’s track record is another important consideration.  How long have they been in operation?  What are their long-term uptime numbers?  What is their past and current financial performance?  How many customers do they have?  All of these questions should be answered satisfactorily.

THE PROVIDER’S LONG-TERM ROADMAP

A provider’s long-term roadmap of planned feature and function enhancements is also an important consideration in choosing a provider.  When will they migrate to the newest version of Exchange?  Do they offer hosted SharePoint or OCS?  Do they offer hosted archiving?  What other services, features and functions are on their long-term roadmap?  How consistent have they been in deploying new services, features and functions in years past?

THE COST AND PAIN OF MIGRATING TO A NEW PROVIDER

Another important consideration in choosing a provider of hosted Exchange 2010 is the tools and services they offer to help in the migration of data, either from another hosted Exchange provider or from an on-premises deployment of Exchange.  This is an important issue, since the migration can be time-consuming and somewhat onerous if the wrong provider is chosen.

THE PROVIDER’S SUPPORT CAPABILITIES

It is also important to understand the specific support capabilities that a hosted provider offers.  For example, how long will the provider’s support organization take to respond to an inquiry during business hours?  After-hours on weekdays?  At 3:00am on a Saturday night?  Further, what other support capabilities does the provider offer for tech support staff and end users?

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This week, Gartner predicted that worldwide SaaS revenues would grow by 18 percent in 2009. From our perspective, this aggressive prediction – totally at odds with the generally gloomy economic picture – is quite right. Salesforce, the SaaS industry bellwether, continues to grow revenues above 20%, and Microsoft is experiencing very rapid SaaS growth, albeit from a lower base.

Here at Intermedia we are also growing faster than this, but our partners are far exceeding the 18% figure. Exchange and related services revenues for our private label Exchange hosting partners are growing in the region of 65 % per year – and this should only increase further with the recent launch of hosted Exchange 2010.

Gartner does break out different segments of SaaS. Intermedia would fall under the ‘content, communications and collaboration’ group (try saying that 10 times, quickly!), which is predicted to grow around 20% in 2009. Outsourcing business email and unified communications is a logical step for many companies, and often a ‘first taste’ of how well it can work to outsource critical systems to specialist companies.

It seems then that SMBs – which we serve here at Intermedia – are adopting SaaS more rapidly than the market at large. Still, the 18% growth rate for SaaS across the board is still impressive, especially in light of Gartner’s prediction of a 5.2% decline for IT spending as a whole in 2009.

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With this week’s launch of hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010,  Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the second in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “Why You Should Consider Migrating to Hosted Exchange 2010” by Osterman Research, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.  

REDUCED PER-SEAT COSTS, ESPECIALLY FOR SMALLER ORGANIZATIONS

Although there are many reasons that organizations should consider the use of hosted Exchange, perhaps the most important reason is its ability to significantly reduce the cost of overall Exchange management.  This has traditionally be a chief argument used in attempting to convince very small organizations of the need for hosted Exchange given that the smaller the organization, the higher their per-seat costs for Exchange and other messaging functionality.

However, the ability to cut the cost of Exchange management through hosting is by no means limited simply to small organizations.  Much larger organizations – those with hundreds and even thousands of users – can also realize significant cost savings by migrating to hosted Exchange and away from an on-premises Exchange environment.  While the cost differences may be most pronounced for the smallest of organizations, even large organizations can see significant reductions in their total cost of managing Exchange by moving to a hosted model for some or all of their users.

MORE PREDICTABLE INVESTMENTS

Closely related to the overall cost savings available in a hosted Exchange model is the more predictable nature of costs with hosted Exchange.  Because virtually all hosted providers commit to a fixed cost per seat over the life of an annual or multi-year contract, decision makers can know what the cost of Exchange management will be over the life of the contract.  On-premises deployments, on the other, hand, can sometimes necessitate new servers or appliances as a result of rapid increases in the volume of spam or the addition of new users.

MORE EFFICIENT USE OF IT STAFF MEMBERS

A hosted Exchange model can also make best use of scarce IT staff members, allowing them to be used for projects or initiatives that can provide more value to an organization.  For example, despite the mission-critical nature of messaging, using seasoned IT staff members to manage Exchange servers, apply patches and the like may not be the best of their time or talent.  Instead, using these staff members for initiatives that can provide a differentiation for a company – such as using them to deploy customer-facing technologies to shorten tech support wait times – might be the better choice.

HIGHER LEVELS OF UPTIME

Osterman Research has found that many organizations do not achieve the 99.9% uptime that most hosted Exchange providers guarantee as part of their Service Level Agreement.  Hosted Exchange providers can offer a very high level of uptime, usually exceeding that of most on-premises deployments.

BETTER SECURITY AGAINST SPAM AND MALWARE

Leading hosted Exchange providers typically offer very robust security capabilities through the use of multiple malware- and spam-filtering technologies, carrier-grade firewalls and other security measures that often would be cost-prohibitive for their customers to deploy and support.  The result of using a hosted Exchange provider is typically (but not always) a higher spam and malware capture rate, lower false positives, and a reduced possibility of malware infiltration.

DATA PROTECTION

Another important benefit of using hosted Exchange is that leading providers will back up their customers’ data and provide rapid data recovery in the event of a server outage or other unforeseen problem.  Further, hosted Exchange can provide protection against natural disasters, fires, power outages, floods and other disrupting events that can knock on-premises email systems out for days or weeks.  This is particularly true for hosted Exchange providers that operate multiple data centers and replicate customer data to at least two geographically distributed data centers.

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With yesterday’s launch of hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010,  Intermedia commissioned two white papers from industry research firms in order to provide additional tools to the marketplace regarding Exchange 2010 and in particular, hosted Exchange 2010. The below is the first in a series of excerpts from the white paper, “Why You Should Consider Migrating to Hosted Exchange 2010” by Osterman Research, Inc. – available on Intermedia’s web site.  

WHO SHOULD CONSIDER MIGRATING TO EXCHANGE 2010

Any organization that uses Exchange should seriously consider migrating to the newest version of the system.  There are a number of reasons to do so, including the ability to significantly lower the cost of ownership, a wider range of storage options that can be used in the new system and thereby driving costs lower, better archiving to enable improved regulatory and legal compliance, and a better user experience that can make individual users more efficient.  Plus, as noted above, organizations that may want to one day migrate to unified communications will have a solid foundation available on which to build their unified communications capabilities.

Further, organizations of all sizes should consider deploying Exchange 2010 as a hosted service.  Doing so, particularly for those organizations that have up to 500 users, can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership for Exchange, provide more predictable costs, improve the effectiveness of IT staff members, improve uptime for end users, provide better protection against spam and malware, and improve the overall resiliency of the system.  It is also important to consider using a hosted Exchange provider that can provide necessary capabilities and that has a solid roadmap for deploying future services.

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