July’s meeting is fast approaching and this month we have 2 speakers who can help maximise your exposure and help control your managed services costs:

First up is Ranbir Sahota of Vitis PR, a Public Relations company specialising it IT PR:

Our broad-range of tech experience spans open source, internet security, network security, biometric security, web application security, public sector technology organisations, business intelligence, document management, content management, business process management, biotechnology, telecoms network infrastructure, enterprise software, software testing, web conferencing, digital marketing recruitment, clean tech, Chip and PIN security, VOIP, mobile workforce and outsourcing.

For our clients we target specialist technology trade, national and broadcast media.  We have also conducted successful campaigns for clients that provide software or hardware for the following sectors: retail, logistics, security, financial services, education, recruitment, hospitality and marketing.

For start ups
Few start-ups can hope to compete with established players using traditional marketing strategies, but with a well thought out public relations strategy even the smallest companies can be heard without having to spend large amounts of their funding on PR.
For small to medium sized companies
The Vitis PR team has years of experience designing and implementing campaigns that help small to medium sized (SMEs) companies take on the established players.

Second up is Christian Nagele of CentraStage:

CentraStage is an IT support platform with a difference. Designed and built in the UK for the IT support company servicing the SME marketplace, it simplifies the management and support of thousands of remote devices over multiple customers, giving IT support companies visibility and control of their environment through a web-based management interface. Uniquely, however, and unlike many other managed service platforms and support technologies, at £1 per device per month CentraStage is priced to go on every device – PCs, laptops, servers – and works out of the box.

With the core functionality of CentraStage being remote support, audit and monitoring, software deployment and configuration, reporting and web-based administration, CentraStage allows cost-effective management of customer devices through a single system.

The CentraStage pricing model means no upfront capital investment - you pay monthly for what you use. Simply log in, deploy the CentraStage client software and you are up and running.

Looks like it’s going to be a great meeting. I’ll send out a calendar request shortly but as normal the meeting is at the Arden Hotel, 5pm for a 5:30 start.

On Tuesday we had N-Able present at the AMITPRO meeting. These guys provide a managed services platform which has similar functionality to Level Platforms and Kaseya but at a price point closer to HoundDog - a very compelling reason to take a closer look.

I was particularly impressed with the built in logmein licence which would mean you don’t have to pay separately for it. If you’re a Microsoft Partner you can try it out for yourself as they are offering 10 licences free for 12 months.

If you missed the meeting this month please feel free to download the presentation they gave on the night.

 

If so then head over to Karl Palachuck’s site. Karl is currently posting a series of articles about getting started in managed services. There is some great advice and it’s free!

I wish this sort of thing had been around when we first started to migrate our business model over to managed services, it would have made things so much easier. Nice one Karl!