VARs Eye Boom in Hosted Microsoft Exchange Business - Opening the Reseller Base
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Ingram Micro announced its deal with GroupSpark, now owned by MindShift, in April, a move that opened up the potential reseller base for GroupSpark to the tens of thousands of Ingram Micro's Seismic partners, says Paul Chisholm, chairman and CEO of MindShift.

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"Being able to reach SMBs is a really big challenge because they are so fragmented," he says. "The only way to do it is through the channel. But building a channel is a time consuming process. Ingram has a great channel already established."

But with Microsoft getting into the business, and so many other providers spreading the message too, are providers concerned at all about commoditization?

"Any technology runs the risk of commoditization," Intermedia's Essner says. "And certainly when you add in another large vendor the rate of commoditization increases. But we view that as a good thing."

That's because Intermedia doesn't offer a commodity service, he says.  "We are not the cheapest, we are not a value offering.  We are a premium price and offer premium services and are continually adding new services."

For example, he says, Intermedia was the first company to offer hosted Microsoft Office Communications server. 

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