Synnex's MSP March
The MicroLite Portal is a secure, Web-based dashboard portal that will enable VARs to provide managed services to their clients without making a significant up-front capital investment. The offering is Synnex's first foray into managed services and will be available starting July 18, according to the company.
The portal gives VARs access to automated and realtime reports designed to monitor and manage a full range of technologies for their customers, from servers to network and security devices to e-mail applications such as Microsoft Exchange. Among the benefits of the portal offering are vulnerability, security and network management alerts along with a service request status snapshot, the company said.
Luke Tang, CEO of CCT Technologies, a $20 million San Jose, Calif., solution provider, expects to make the leap into the managed services business by packaging the Synnex managed services offering with his own local 24x7 support for small businesses. Tang said he expects the new offering could bring as much as $1 million of high-margin revenue to his company.
"It is inevitable this type of service will become more and more important," Tang said. "More businesspeople are seeing the need to monitor and manage their IT on a daily basis. Smaller companies are realizing if they are not doing this, then they are in danger."
The portal is the result of a strategic investment Synnex made earlier this year in Microland Limited, an IT infrastructure management and technical support services company based in Bangalore, India, with U.S. headquarters in San Jose.
John Paget, president of North America and COO of Synnex, Fremont, Calif., said the margins on the portal offering will be the most significant Synnex has ever offered to VARs. "This is a breakthrough event in our industry," he said, referring to the new MicroLite Portal. "We are enabling VARs in the small- and medium-business market to provide the same managed services capability that Fortune 100 outsourcing providers offer today."
"This is a great alternative for somebody that doesn't have the cash flow to make a significant investment in hosting a managed services platform themselves," said Jay Tipton, vice president at Technology Specialists, a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based solution provider. "You have to put skin in the game with the other managed services platforms."
Tipton said he will evaluate the Synnex offering as an alternative for his clients even though he has already partnered with Kaseya and Autonomic Software to provide managed services by hosting those software offerings himself.