Managed services platform provider N-able announced it has entered into a strategic technology and marketing agreement with Microsoft that will help its managed services provider partners become more efficient and more profitable.

Under the agreement, N-able's N-central 6.5 managed services platform software will be compatible with Microsoft's System Center Essentials 2007 product line, according to spokespersons from both companies.

"We're bringing all types of different products, technologies and platforms together so our service providers can monitor, manage and access all of a customer's relevant system information through one centralized environment," said Gavin Garbutt, president and CEO of N-able.

Garbutt said the new agreement was established to make it easier for Microsoft and N-able partners to integrate the N-central 6.5 managed services platform with Microsoft's System Center Essentials 2007. System Center Essentials is Microsoft's set of IT systems monitoring and management software tools designed for SMBs (small and midsize businesses) with up to 500 PCs and 30 servers.

Increasing the number of systems that can be monitored and managed through a single console can also streamline a partner's workflow, making them more efficient. Greater efficiency leads to greater cost savings, and even frees up resources the partner can use to possibly take on additional and larger clients.

While N-able's sweet spot is with SMBs, Garbutt said the technology partnership will be a huge benefit to larger partners as well. He said that many partners who started out as an SMB serving other SMBs have experienced explosive growth in their MSP (managed services provider) business, and they have had to adapt to the needs of larger midsize business customers and even larger enterprise customers.

"This is a huge advantage for our partners because it provides them many more enterprise-level system monitoring and management capabilities both from N-central and from System Center Essentials," he said.

In addition to the interoperability agreement with Microsoft, N-able on March 5 signed a similar agreement with backup and storage vendor Iron Mountain, and Garbutt says it has no plans to slow down.

Garbutt said the agreement with Microsoft was a "natural evolution" of N-able's extensive relationship with the software vendor. N-able is a Microsoft Gold Partner, and also uses Microsoft's reporting engine technology in the N-central line of products. Garbutt added that N-able is also one of Microsoft's largest users of SharePoint server, which N-able uses to drive its channel partner portal.

Garbutt said the interoperability will be phased into N-central over a number of product releases, and that Microsoft and N-able are working together to also provide technical and sales education materials for partners.