Lexmark Launches Managed Services With N-Able, Level Platforms

Lexmark is partnering with N-Able and Level Platforms on a program that lets solution providers manage their customers’ printers, scanners and other output devices.

Lexmark also is talking with other managed service vendors, said Jim Webb, director of channel solutions and industry partners at the Lexington, Ky.-based peripherals company.

Solution providers see 4.7 times more revenue and 3.5 times more profitability managing an output device over a three-year period compared with just selling the device, according to Webb.

“The key is increasing profitability and increasing their trusted adviser status with their end users,” he said. “All that comes together around managing end-user environments.”

Lexmark made the announcement at Ingram Micro’s VentureTech Network show in Montreal, but the offering is available to any N-Able or Level Platform partner, Webb said.

Managing output devices has been a missing element in solution providers’ managed-service offerings, he noted. “There’s a lot of money to be made. They break more frequently than desktops. There is maintenance money to be made [in] extended warranties, supplies,” he said.

The initiative was borne out of Lexmark’s Impressions program, a cost-per-page program that helped solution providers track end users' printing expenses and advise them on how to cut those costs.

“The feedback we got was this is cool, but [solution providers] have another set of tools to manage servers, phones and desktops. They want that to come together. They want to manage the entire landscape. A lightbulb went off, and we started talking to N-Able and [Level Platforms],” Webb said.

The result is that Impressions has been integrated into the vendors’ platforms, which allows solution providers to manage output devices along with other hardware.

“If you think of [N-Able’s and LPI’s] dashboard views of end users’ environments, solution providers can have blinking lights that a printer is offline. They can track page counts. They can know there’s a paper jam at access point No. 2 of Drawer 3,” Webb said.

Tweet

   

More