Managed Service Provider Week in Review

Partnerships once again dominated the managed services headlines this week with IBM making perhaps one of the most significant announcements of them all. Big Blue launched its IBM Cloud Marketplace, putting them in league with cloud players AWS, Google and Microsoft.

The new app marketplace provides a central location for IBM’s cloud services as well as its third-party partners who use the company’s SoftLayer infrastructure platform. IBM says the new Marketplace has a “consumer feel” and likens it to Salesforce.com’s App Exchange.

Dimension Data also announced a significant partnership deal this week, choosing Microsoft’s Cloud Platform to power its new private cloud offering. The solution lets the service provider’s customers develop and host Microsoft applications within Dimension’s dedicated cloud environment.

In an interesting extended partnership agreement, Sprint is using managed services from Amdocs for quickly creating and monetizing mobile data services. The mobile carrier was already using Amdocs’ managed billing and customer services, and the MSP is also managing IT infrastructure for the company.

Masergy Communications also had a major announcement this week, rolling out a new mobile app for global on demand bandwidth. The company’s Intelligent Service Control Mobile Application works with Android and iOS devices and now offers integrated cloud network management.

And in MSP cloud infrastructure news, Continuum announced its Continuum Cloud Console (C3) for simplified cloud management. The IaaS management platform is designed to let MSPs easily create, manage and monitor virtual servers to meet the needs of its SMB customers.

In regional news, Mammoth Networks has expanded its nationwide network of more than 30 points of presence (POPs) with a new Dallas facility. By collocating with Equinix in the downtown InfoMart building, the company has expanded its Denver to Phoenix network ring and entrenched its presence in the Southwest region. Mammoth specializes in aggregating wholesale data services, making a Dallas POP important as the city is a key interconnection point for carriers and aggregators.