Tech Data signs up managed services vendor 20 August, 2006 By Paul Weinberg

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Tech Data is enabling US channel partners to remotely monitor and manage end user network infrastructure on a 24-hour a day basis, courtesy of a third party managed services vendor, Innovations Tech.

In this so far US-only-program partners can access a number of remote network management and monitoring solutions, as well as a range of threat assessment and security audit tools, explained Barb Miller, Tech Data's director, government and technical services.

"Managed services are an excellent opportunity for resellers to generate recurring revenue by establishing long-term service agreements with customers," she told eChannelLine.com. "Resellers successfully implementing a managed services practice benefit from regular monthly payments, better insight into an end user's operations and enhanced customer."

The channel partner can determine the pricing of the managed service, based on its costs, and pass that on to the end user, she stated. "There is almost no cost of entry [to the program].

It is up to the channel partner to decide what to charge customers, Miller continued.

In face of more complex networks and greater security issues channel partners have taken a greater interest in outsourcing the managing and monitoring function for a network.

Tech Data has sought to respond to this demand by examining available third party providers that offer this type of service, stated Jim Cooper, manager of TDOnCall Technical Services Suite.

Initially, Tech Data found that many third party managed services carry a requirement that resellers themselves invest their own dollars into the network monitoring and management function.

"[The third parties] build a fairly significant requirement in terms of time and effort to deploy."

With many channel partners too small and lacking both the funds and the resources to accomplish this task, this was not a practical consideration, stated Cooper.

The ideal candidate was finally found in Innovations Tech, which after six months of discussion signed a contract with Tech Data.

"The reseller is in fact outsourcing that monitoring and management to Innovations Tech so they don't have to build that investment, in a network center," Cooper recalled.

Cooper declined to discuss the details of the contract with Innovations Tech or what partners should be charging end users for the managed service.

Tech Data in its press release provided a description of the Innovations Tech's NetWatch and NetManage managed services tools. "In many cases, resellers can take correction action without dispatching a technician to a customer's site," it stated.

Though NetWatch resellers can maintain a close watch on a user's network to maintain optimum performance and resource availability, as well as identify suspicious activity and security threats.

In addition, NetManage provides an array of remote management services including software updates, security patches, firewall maintenance, data backup, network performance enhancement and device configuration.