Microsoft Exchange Hosting Giant Intermedia Says Azure Will Benefit MSPs, ISVs - Intermedia May Partner with Microsoft
(
Page 2 of 2 )
While Intermedia currently hosts all its own SAAS applications on its own
infrastructure, Bob Leibholz, vice president of sales and business development,
says Intermedia will likely look to partner with Microsoft in the future to
meet some of its hosting needs.
"We are not averse to working with them," Leibholz says.
"Particularly if we develop something that needs periodic bursts of
computing capacity."
Microsoft's cloud entry, Azure, adds something that was missing to the
cloud-based infrastructure marketplace, according to Intermedia executives: a
dot-net-centric platform.
"If you look at the cloud-based infrastructures out there, a lot of them are
Linux-based offerings," Essner says. "There's not a lot out there for
Windows-based customers." Azure is the market's answer to that, he says.
To help its end customers and channel partners, Intermedia has developed a
management application that will allow customers to sync user information for on-premises
applications with their Active Directory to enable whatever services they want
from Intermedia.
For example, a company with 100 users could just push a button and all its user
information would get sent over to Intermedia. All the on-premises passwords
are synchronized with all the off-premises passwords in a way that is
transparent to users.
Leibholz says Microsoft's Online Services, set to be released in the next few
weeks, may pose more of a threat than Azure. But Intermedia really isn't
worried at all.
"It's created a lot more excitement in the user world," Leibholz
says. "The world is our oyster at this point. Our growth rates are
phenomenal. They haven't slowed down with the advent of Microsoft Online
Services. I don't think their success will impinge on ours."
And MSPs and ISVs stand to benefit by the greater availability of cloud
computing.
"ISVs tend to add layers of value to the offering by building code,
applications and solutions," Essner says. "The Azure platform gives
them a cloud-based infrastructure on which to add their value. They used to
have to invest in hardware or software on which their app would run. They can
now deliver that value on a cloud-based infrastructure without having to invest
in infrastructure. ISVs are the channel partners that stand to gain the
most."
Microsoft Partner 
