NetEnrich Launches Networking Managed Services Practice

VARs can leverage NetEnrich's center as well as its bench of high-end certified engineers when and where they don't have the skills in house, said NetEnrich CEO Raju Chekuri.

"We want to help VARs go up the channel. Most guys have 20 or 30 customers. We want them to be able to serve remote branch customers or manufacturing centers or midmarket enterprises. We want to bring enterprise class services to VARs. A big component of that market is the network," Chekuri said at the XChange Solution Provider conference in Orlando.

NetEnrich, based in San Jose, Calif., offers two distinct packages for VARs based on recurring monthly fees. The first, Networking Practice Aid, includes basic monitoring and management of routers, switches, firewalls, VPNs, unified communications managers and more, Chekuri said.

"If something fails, we alert you because you want to control the rest of the stuff," he said.

Networking Practice Aid includes 24x7x365 monitoring, alert triaging, validation and standard operating procedure (SOP)-based remediation of server or device issues, according to NetEnrich. If the initial SOP does not resolve the issue, it is escalated to the solution provider's IT staff or customer depending on the VAR's pre-determined protocol. Aid also offers weekly and monthly reporting capabilities that solution providers can share with customers.

The second package, Networking Practice Manage, is a full-managed offering in which NetEnrich takes over the customer's entire network on behalf of the VAR, he said.

"We make sure the whole network is up and running, whatever needs to be done," Checkuri said. "On the simplified package, we co-exist with you. On the second, we do the whole thing for you, for example if you want to focus on desktops and services."

The Networking Practice Manage package offers deeper problem remediation and root cause analysis, coupled with full and ongoing identification and documentation of a unified communications or VoIP environment. The offering also includes Moves/Add/Changes, which can free up a VAR's IT staff from routine service requests, according to the company.

A separate offering, Networking Practice On Demand, lets VARs tap into NetEnrich's technical expertise on an hourly, as-needed basis to support complex network integrations, Unified Communications or VoIP solution provisioning, as well as migrations and other IT projects, Chekuri said.

The ultimate goal, Chekuri said, is to help VARs move up stream and in essence make a VAR a mini version of IBM Global Services by making them seem larger than they really are.

"We want to bring an enterprise-class scope to the VAR base. We want to help them upsell to bigger customers," he said. "If I'm a VAR and I have a CCIE, do I want him to manage [customers' networks] remotely or do I want him to get more customers, be in pre-sales solutions and charge a couple hundred bucks an hour and let the operations piece go to us" Checkuri said. "If you have a 10 or 20 person VAR, you don't have the full complement of [engineers] for a full solution. You can make it work with [NetEnrich]."