News
Ingram Micro Adds Microsoft Products to its Seismic Platform
- By Scott Bekker
- April 16, 2008
Ingram Micro is adding hosted Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM
to its Seismic-branded portfolio of software and hosted infrastructure that
is designed to help solution providers launch themselves into the managed service
provider business.
Collectively, the new Microsoft-based offerings are called the Seismic Hosted
Software-as-a-Service program. Ingram Micro is immediately offering Windows
SharePoint 3.0, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server
2003. In May, the company plans to provide Seismic Hosted Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 4.0.
The Santa Ana, Calif.-based technology distributor launched its Seismic Platform
and Virtual Services Warehouse in October 2006 as part of its North America
Services Division.
Initially, Ingram Micro resold licenses of Level Platforms Managed Workspace
through an alliance with Level Platforms Inc., and followed that in 2007 with
an arrangement to host Level Platforms' remote monitoring and managed
(RMM) services product for solution providers. A portal included training, education
and best practices for aspiring MSPs.
A few months later, Ingram Micro expanded its Seismic Virtual Services Warehouse
to include a Managed Network Operations Center, a Managed Help Desk, PSA (professional
services automation) Software through a deal with Autotask, and E-mail and Web
Defense Services through a deal with MX Logic. Those offerings were quickly
followed by Online Backup and Restore, based on VaultLogix technology, and Print
Monitoring and Management, from Print Audit.
The shift to include Microsoft applications takes the Seismic platform out
of the back-end of management and security tools that are seldom noticed by
SMB customers into the higher-profile world of hosted applications that most
customers are aware of.
A major piece of the new Microsoft offerings through the Seismic platform will
be the ability of partners to put their own brand, rather than the Seismic brand,
on the hosted Microsoft applications.
The Seismic program will also guarantee partners 99.9 percent uptime on shared
servers and 100 percent uptime on dedicated servers. Pricing on the Microsoft
services will be per user.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.