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By Liam Eagle, theWHIR.com
June 18, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- On-demand service platform operator Jamcracker (jamcracker.com) said this week that a new service would provide value-added resellers with "turn-key entry into the lucrative managed services market."
On Wednesday, the company introduced its MSP LaunchPad service, which it describes in its press release as "an 'out of the box' set of on-demand services and software for VARs that want to enter the high margin managed service provider business."
The new service by Jamcracker may help to define the role for VARs in the fairly nascent business of hosted IT services, where business models are still being defined. And it may similarly serve to better carve out a role for Jamcracker itself.
The purpose of the platform, says Jamcracker, is to enable VARs - which, in most cases provide their customers with software solutions based on license sales models - to begin providing managed services without having to deploy remote management tools, provisioning, subscription billing and administration systems or staffing a help desk operation.
Rather than losing customers to hosted service providers, it seems, VARs would be able to provide their existing customers, and new customers, with managed services.
In a bulleted list, the press release describes the MSP LaunchPad's "deliverables" as including "leading hosted service delivery tools," which include Kaseya and Level Platforms; a catalog of on-demand applications from Microsoft, IBM, McAfee, Cisco and other providers; an integration toolkit for bundling existing services; tools for order management, service provisioning, customer administration and billing; an automated "services-delivery workflow engine;" and 24-hour level 1 and level 2 customer support.
It doesn't appear that VARs need much at all in order to get started. But in the emerging IT services market, it's often the customers that are the final piece of the puzzle. Presumably, the VARs joining the program will be bringing the customers with them.
"With the $240 billion market for small-medium business IT services still in its infancy, VARs are increasingly expanding or crossing over into the MSP space," says Steve Crawford, vice president of marketing for Jamcracker, quoted in the press release. "However, VARs and MSPs often lack the infrastructure to move from a manual to automated service delivery model. LaunchPad was created to facilitate this transition and handle the operational and administrative complexities of running and growing a successful MSP business."
Jamcracker says the MSP LaunchPad is integrated with its Jamcracker Service Delivery Network, which provides the backbone and business administration tools for provisioning and billing.
Although it is designed for VARs, says the company, the LaunchPad can also provide resources for MSPs that want to scale their businesses quickly.
While the service was set to launch Wednesday, there does not yet appear to be an easily identified home for the program on the Jamcracker website. That may arrive later.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
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This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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