IndependenceIT Targets Azure Remote App Users With New App Services Platform, Channel Program

Cloud management platform provider IndependenceIT this week launched an application services delivery platform, along with a new channel program aimed at ISVs and MSPs.

The new App Services Delivery Platform is aimed at helping facilitate the deployment of hosted application services and could open new revenue streams for partners entering the cloud-based application market, according to the Allentown, Pa.-based company.

It also provides an alternative platform for partners when Microsoft shuts down its Azure remote app product and shifts its users to Citrix’s XenApp Express, a move Microsoft said in a blog post was inspired by feedback from customers who said they wanted ’a comprehensive, end-to-end, cloud-based solution for delivering Windows apps.’

[Related: CRN Exclusive: IndependenceIT Releases Redesigned Cloud Workspace Suite]

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In the blog post, Microsoft reported that the best way the company believed it could give clients that capability was to wind down its own offering and deliver those capabilities through XenApp Express.

"We want people to know, as they seek alternatives [to Microsoft’s Azure remote app product] that they don’t have to wait for a Citrix-based solution,’ IndependenceIT CEO Seth Bostock said in an interview with CRN.

Microsoft said in August that it would shut down its Azure Remote App product, ending new sales of it Oct. 1 but supporting current customers until August 2017.

Xen App Express will not be available until the beginning of the 2017 calendar year, according to Citrix.

’Timing is important on this,’ Bostock said, ’We want partners to know that this is a solution that they don’t have to build out. … This is a product that they can go to right now. We are ready today.’

IndependenceIT’s new platform is a solution the channel can rely on as ’a true replacement for a remote app,’ according to Bill Forte, CEO of CloudTitan, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based partner of IndependenceIT,

Forte said that although hosted application services is a new solution for his company, CloudTitan is already developing services around it.

What makes it different from the traditional hosted desktop solutions that he has sold in the past, he said, is that application services allow a customer that is anxious about leaving data in the cloud to keep their data on premise, while allowing the solution provider to offer hosted applications from the cloud.

’Any end user can store and maintain their own data, but we can use the app services to cloud-enable that and essentially make any application a SaaS application … it expands the solution to any environment,’ Forte said.

Bostock said InependenceIT hopes to make it easier for channel partners to move applications to the cloud.

"We are thinking of this as ’the small business server that’s a Microsoft replacement.' As everyone is looking to retire that hardware, we have a tool that is going to make it easier to do on-boarding, management, scaling and all of that,’ he said.

’It’s kind of an all-in-one tool … effectively, we are the glue in the middle, and we are the automation engine that brings everything together with a high degree of workflow,’ said Chip Buck, IndependenceIT co-founder and CTO.

Independence IT is also introducing a channel program aimed at ISVs and MSPs that are looking to add application services to their portfolios.

New entrants to the program, Buck said, will receive licensing for IndependenceIT’s entire software suite, and the ability to manage 15 Active Directory users or 50 virtual machines, for just $100 per month.

The program also includes higher margins, a dedicated technical support team for partners and a dedicated solution partner portal.

Forte said the support that IndependenceIT has given him through the program has made the product even better and that he has worked closely with the company to create a solution that works very well with his applications.

’It is symbiotic; we really work well together,’ he said.