2015 ChannelPro SMB All-Stars

With archrival ConnectWise clearly in its sights, Autotask is making an aggressive and impressive foray beyond its familiar base in PSA software. Late last year, the East Greenbush, N.Y.-based company released its Endpoint Management system, an RMM solution based on the CentraStage software it acquired in September 2014. Another major acquisition, this time of file sync and share vendor Soonr, followed this summer. President and CEO Mark Cattini has indicated that there will be more purchases in Autotask’s future, providing additional capabilities for Autotask partners.

Software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and cloud computing are rapidly turning routers, switches, and other traditional networking devices into yesterday’s news, so network hardware kingpin Cisco, of San Jose, Calif., is pushing fast into more promising markets like data virtualization and cloud services—and bringing its partners along for the ride. Within the past year alone, Cisco has introduced seven new cloud-related service offerings, announced a new software partner program, and expanded its cloud and managed services partner program. It will be interesting to see just how much further Cisco redefines itself under the leadership of freshly seated CEO Chuck Robbins.

Two years after going private, Dell continues to turn one-time skeptics among SMB partners into believers. The Round Rock, Texas-based hardware giant says it will invest $125 million in its channel this year alone, including $26 million worth of improvements to its deal registration system, quoting tools, and ProSupport customer service offering, among other partner program components. New products like the slick XPS 13 Ultrabook, with its groundbreaking bezel-less “infinity display,” prove that Dell hasn’t lost its chops in hardware design either.

Not content to release one wave of power-sipping new processors this year, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel unveiled two, beginning with a batch of new Broadwell processors at the start of the year and continuing with the first of its efficient new Skylake processors in September. Intel’s January launch of the new Curie line of processors for wearable devices and more recent investments in both quantum computing and the OpenStack cloud platform show that it’s eyeing a variety of markets beyond its core PC processor business too.

CEO Satya Nadella has this once-slow-footed IT leviathan in Redmond, Wash., on something of a roll. Microsoft’s new Windows 10 operating system had already been downloaded 75 million times as of September, its Office 365 collaboration suite wins 50,000 new SMB customers a month, and interesting new apps like the Sway presentation system and Send email system are showing up constantly, along with versions of Microsoft’s Office solutions for iOS and Android devices. Incredibly, software-oriented Microsoft even appears to have taught device-oriented Apple a thing or two about hardware design: After years of stubbornly calling them unnecessary, Apple equipped its new iPad Pro with both a stylus and detachable keyboard, just like Microsoft’s Surface tablets.

Perhaps best of all from a channel perspective, Microsoft’s newly expanded Cloud Solution Provider program allows partners to bundle and bill customers for a wider array of online solutions than ever. “I believe with the CSP program Microsoft has once again ascertained its position as one of, if not the, strongest through-partner vendors in our space,” says Jamison West, CEO of Seattle-based MSP Arterian.

Introduced in August and specifically designed for SMBs, ShoreTel Connect is the first unified communications platform that companies can run on-site, online, or both, putting channel pros and their customers in complete control of how and where they deploy UC solutions and how rapidly—if at all—they migrate their UC environments into the cloud. Just in case that wasn’t enough, ShoreTel dramatically simplified its partner program, boosted financial incentives for deal registration by 50 percent, and added new marketing development funds for cloud-related opportunities.

Three big moves landed LogicNow, of Dundee, Scotland, on our All-Stars list for 2015. First, it integrated its MAX MailProtection and MAX MailArchive solutions with its MAX RemoteManagement platform, giving MSPs the centralized control over those programs they’ve long coveted. Second, it rolled out an innovative new machine learning feature called LOGICcards that draws on billions of data points from the millions of devices LogicNow partners support to provide advance warning of potential device failures and security threats. And third, it made MAX Backup the first BDR product on the market with per-device rather than usage-based pricing, giving resellers a more predictable basis for forecasting costs and controlling margins.

Michael Klein, president of Computer Directions Inc., a solution provider in Albertson, N.Y., on Long Island, likes the way LogicNow treats its partners too. “Unlike many cloud firms, they do not hide behind a website,” he says. “They have people willing to help and have great customer service.”

Long a provider of advanced consulting services to the SMB channel, Third Tier introduced its first product offering this spring, and it’s a solution every admirer of Microsoft’s gone-but-not-forgotten Small Business Server should take a look at—especially if they’re leery of sharing clients and profits with infrastructure-as-a-service providers. Called Be the Cloud, it’s a heavily virtualized cloud-in-a-box solution that lets channel pros deliver a complete SBS-like experience to any end-user device via their very own in-house public cloud, resulting in higher profits and greater customer stickiness than offerings involving third-party hosting providers.