Level Platforms’ update to its managed services platform,
Managed Workplace 2010, now includes on-site utilities and a Website console,
plus support for mobile clients and new Intel vPro productivity enhancements.
"It’s a product maturity launch loaded with lots and lots of small
features that our partners have been asking for," Peter Sandiford, CEO
of Level Platforms, tells Channel Insider. "Over the last year we have
addressed every customer concern about our product and made it more solid and
reliable."
Those fall into two main sets—new features that enable MSPs to be more
productive, i.e., allowing them to click once instead of 10 times in the
previous version; and performance and availability features, i.e.. features
around security and availability and firewalls.
Many in the industry have acknowledged that IT services including managed
services have become the highest margin business for solution providers and
vendors alike. For example, computer maker Dell released its own managed
service offering in 2009 after acquiring MSP platform provider Silverback.
Level Platforms, considered a smaller player in the managed services platform
provider space, was able to pick up some former Silverback MSPs after Dell’s
acquisition in the summer of 2007. One of the larger players to ally with Level
Platforms was Do IT Smarter, a master MSP in San Diego
that previously only had worked with Silverback.
For Do IT Smarter, the new LPI platform provides a “Blue Printing” feature that
allows the master MSP to create a standard template that it can reproduce each
time it sets up a new reseller MSP. “Now we’ll be able to give them our system
already implemented,” says CEO Lane Smith.
Smith says the Onsite Manager component’s new features, such as a centralized
console, will go a long way toward simplifying MSP tasks as well.
Level Platforms says that new Intel vPro features in Level Platforms’ most
recent MSP release include auto-discovery of vPro devices as well as Serial
over LAN and IDE-Redirect
support, which enables remote imaging of non-functioning devices.
That was a feature welcomed by Level Platforms partner Solutions Inc. in Spencer,
Iowa.
“Many of our customers—some of them a 6-hour drive away—have Intel vPro-enabled
devices, and it’s especially cool that we can now watch a machine fire up and
power on without Windows running, and without having to make the trip,” says
Matt Baack, IT systems engineer at the company, in a statement. “We’ll also be
able to remotely power-cycle these devices to save our customers on energy
costs.”
Level Platforms says its new mobile client support comes in the form of
“Roaming Devices,” which offers a production preview of Level Platforms’
Offsite Assistant—a secure, zero-touch network connection service that allows
laptops to be managed as if they were connected to the LAN.