For those users rushing to hosted storage solutions, the news that Amazon’s S3 utility has crashed should make many of them think twice before putting their eggs in the remote basket. S3 suffered a “massive” outage today, beginning at about 7:30 am ET. By about 9:00am, Amazon posted a note in the service’s customer forum,…

How long until managed services are commoditized? A tough question to answer, not least because many solution providers (if not most) are still trying to come to terms with transitioning their business to managed services, let alone it already becoming a commoditized arena. Nevertheless, this was the question posed to Dell’s channel chief, Greg Davis…

If any of your clients are doing video production, you might want to have them take a look at a collaboration technology from a new company called Cozimo.com that is geared towards them. Everyone these days is shooting video and thinks of themselves as video producers and editors. And while it is great that more…

I am doing some research for a story for the New York Times on managed service providers and while I haven’t finished am finding out some interesting trends that I thought I would share with you. The idea behind MSPs isn’t new — we have been talking about it in the trades for at least…

Several managed-services platform vendors are turning the screws on their Managed Service Providers with tough language and unfair consequences in their reseller contracts, says the industry group MSPAlliance. Contracts with several of vendors, including some of the most familiar names, stipulate that MSPs stick to a defined territory and meet sales quotas or hand over…