We’re announcing today a new partnership with Ingram Micro Seismic. Under the new alliance, Ingram Micro Seismic will co-market and sell our hosted Microsoft Exchange 2007, Office Communication Service (OCS), SharePoint 3.0 and Dynamics CRM to its rapidly growing reseller and MSP partner base. The private label hosted services are available now as part of Ingram Micro Seismic.

We operate the world’s largest hosted Exchange service, hosting more than 225,000 premium Microsoft Exchange mailboxes. The alliance with Ingram Micro Seismic marks a growing demand for hosted solutions and is, for us, a major resale agreement with a worldwide distribution partner.

Ingram Micro’s confidence in our hosted solutions offering is a direct result of our commitment and demonstrated record of providing unsurpassed service and uptime to our customers. We are looking forward to working with the Ingram Micro Seismic team and helping their partners grow their businesses and increase their recurring revenue streams by leveraging our portfolio of hosted Microsoft solutions.

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Intermedia’s Brent Rich (Director of Operations) will be a guest speaker at The Radicati Group’s Microsoft Exchange Server E2010 web conference today (Thursday September 17^th).

At 12.30pm (EST), Brent will join speakers from Microsoft, EMC, HP and USA.NET to discuss the impending Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 release. Due in late 2009, Exchange 2010 will add powerful capabilities for archiving and compliance, increased flexibility and reliability, and anywhere access.

The Radicati Group will provide a brief overview of Exchange 2010, and a speaker panel of Microsoft partners will discuss how they see it meeting evolving market needs.

Representing the world’s largest provider of hosted Exchange, Brent will of course discuss issues related to hosting Exchange 2010. We can’t give any sneak previews here, but the web conference is free, so please join:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/650454993

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This week at Microsoft’s World Wide Partner conference in New Orleans Intermedia announced an expansion of its highly successful private label partner program in Latin America. Solution providers in Latin America can now offer their customers Intermedia’s Business Productivity Suite of hosted Microsoft products, including hosted Exchange 2007, Outlook 2007, hosted Office Communications Server 2007 and hosted SharePoint 3.0. Providers can offer the turnkey service under their own brand and manage it with a private label version of Intermedia’s end user control panel – now available in Spanish and English. Intermedia also offers Outlook 2007 in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and 14 other languages.

Continue reading, "Partner Program in Latin America Offers Spanish-Language Version of HostPilot"

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What is “Aaaaaaaaaaapps!”?

(a) The scream heard ’round the world?
(b) Battle cry on the Planet of the Apps?
(c) Orlando Magic cheerleaders’ chant?
(d) The everpresent refrain at the recent RIM WES conference?
(e) None of the above?

I recently attended and spoke at RIM’s annual Wireless Enterprise Summit (WES), a.k.a. Appland. RIM has been doing a great job of harnessing the smartphone interest created by the iPhone and drawing more attention to BlackBerry devices as a result. RIM’s device sales numbers have been impressive, and growth on the consumer side has helped this in an unexpected way. RIM is busily rolling out its App store, and the push is on for greater numbers of BlackBerry-specific applications. It is clear from the various RIM presentations, constant encouragement from RIM representatives, and even from the tradeshow floor that Appland will represent RIM’s next “promised land”.

Why? I think the answers are fairly clear: Carriers make good money on bandwidth, and good apps are “sticky”–they keep customers hooked to their devices and data plans. Beyond that, email/SMS is becoming the standard for smartphones; while the market is certainly not saturated for these functions, the opportunity for growth is limitless for well-designed, usable, bulletproof applications. From a hosting perspective, the applications that meet this criteria, are potentially ubiquitous, can leverage BES functionality, and are designed for a multi-tenant environment, will have key advantages over other, less robust applications.

Let The Application Contest Begin!

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Last week, I was fortunate to be able to attend and speak at Microsoft’s Hosting Day, held in Chicago on April 16. Microsoft Hosting Days is an annual event series held in different cities around the world. The goal of these events is to provide hosters, telcos, ISVs, VARs and systems integrators with more knowledge and more tools to help grow their business. I was impressed with the turnout of Microsoft employees, VARs, hosters and SIs, and it was great to see old friends and meet new ones. But what was more impressive was how many people told me that their sales have increased during the past quarter, a period that we all acknowledge was a downturn.

Continue reading, "Software as a Service is carrying Web Hosters through the Down Economy"

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For the last few years, the BlackBerry has been king of the business smartphones. Even as the iPhone becomes increasingly business friendly, it seems that the majority of pure business users prefer the BlackBerry to any other device. At Intermedia, many more of our hosted Exchange customers synchronize their mail, calendars and contacts to a BlackBerry than they do to an iPhone.

I think BlackBerry’s success in the business market stemmed from the device’s simplicity. Traditionally, BlackBerry smartphones came with a rather limited feature set, but it did them all really well. Wireless push email, phone, calendars, contacts and tasks. That was about it. There weren’t too many games, no music, no videos…just plain old boring business communications. A focus on the core business needs, combined with an emphasis on security and remote provisioning, policy and management all through a connection with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server made the BlackBerry smartphone the ideal business accessory.
Continue reading, "Is BlackBerry Suffering an Identity Crisis?"

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Intermedia hosted its first Partner Summit in New York on March 5th and 6th.  Our most successful Private Label providers exchanged ideas around industry, marketing and technical trends.  The event was a tremendous opportunity to meet the faces of IT specialists, owners of local MSP and ISPs and executives from billion-dollar corporations – the very lifeline responsible for Intermedia’s tremendous growth in the face of economic challenges and SaaS opportunities.  The Summit also represented a milestone in the evolution and growth of Intermedia as a company.  Simply put, our partner program and ecosystem is core to Intermedia, a fact reflected in our platform, technology and partner-focused company structure.
Continue reading, "Intermedia Hosts Inaugural Partner Conference"

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The media has well documented President Obama’s “addiction” to his BlackBerry, a Verizon Wireless 8830.  However, as the New York Times reported, for security reasons, the president must check his BlackBerry at the oval office door.  This won’t be easy for the new President.  In a recent interview with CNBC and the New York Times, President-Elect Obama noted: “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry. They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”
Continue reading, "5 Signs President Obama is Breaking his BlackBerry Addiction"

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The competition in the smartphone market is extremely intense, and continues to heat up. I remember a time not too long ago where the only options for business users were Windows Mobile devices or Palm Treos. Sure, there was always the BlackBerry, but back then it was great for email but not much else. In this market it was easy for Microsoft to dominate, despite having a less than stellar offering. Even Palm made Windows Mobile the de facto operating system on its Treo 700 series devices.

Continue reading, "Is Microsoft Calling it Quits on Windows Mobile?"

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