Web Hosting Provider The Planet Poised to Launch SBS Offering
August 28, 2007 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Earlier this month we reported on a series of webinars aimed at providing system integrators an insight into The Planet’s upcoming Microsoft Small Business Server offerings. Well, launch of the product is upon us and HostSearch.com caught up with Carl Meadows, The Planet’s senior product manager for its new Microsoft SBS products to see how preparations for the launch went and what we can expect from the company’s new offering.
 HostSearch: Carl, congratulations on the launch of your new SBS offering. I guess you have been a bit busy over the last couple of weeks?
Carl Meadows: We’ve been working for several months on this new offering, so it’s terrific to see it come to fruition. It’s a channel-only offering, so we’ve also been working to develop our contacts in the integrator community. We’re one of the first in the Web hosting industry to deliver this solution, which provides hosted e-mail and collaboration with a complete enterprise-class “IT portfolio-in-a-box.” It includes Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint and Microsoft SQL server bundled with anti-virus and SPAM protection, along with comprehensive data backup, backed by a 100% uptime service level agreement. What we heard loud and clear by doing our research is that providing customizable solutions for small businesses is possible. For a long time, companies have approached this market with cookie-cutter solutions, and that doesn’t work. Just because a business is small, it doesn’t mean that they don’t require a customized approach exactly as an enterprise would need.
HostSearch: Did many people take part in the webinars you ran?
Carl Meadows: The Planet’s webinars were well-received by the system integrator community. In fact, at launch we’ll have 15 IT integrators who’ve signed up to offer the new solution to their customers. We think that’s a great start and expect interest to grow over the next 12 months. There’s been a consistent theme we’ve heard from integrators – they’re looking for alternative solutions to grow their business, and they see our solution as a tremendous opportunity. Since we manage the servers from our world-class data centers and provide 7x24x365 support, they can focus on the important services that enable them to gain a more profitable slice of business.
HostSearch: Tell us a little about your Microsoft Small Business Server offerings – how do they differ from normal server offerings.
Carl Meadows: To support their customers, IT integrators are saddled with purchasing hardware, software and all the gear that’s required to get their customers up and running. Beyond the sizable cash outlay, there’s also a matter of getting this equipment up and running with the specific applications required by their customers. Through our new offering, The Planet provides all the hardware, software, network and bandwidth, along with around-the-clock support so their customers are running in days, not weeks. Even better, these integrators can reclaim their lives. They no longer face the 3:00 a.m. calls to get in a car and drive to a site and repair a server that’s down – we take care of that part of their business. Now they can focus on the important specialized services and applications required by their customers.
As part of the program, The Planet provides a dedicated account manager to support each system integrator partner, along with a Partner Enablement Kit that offers product brochures, sales tools and training materials to support business development.
Since this is a service directly offered to the channel, as we gather leads, we pass them directly to our integrator partners. Their core competency is providing these specialized, on-site services, while ours is providing the core infrastructure. It’s a great combination.
HostSearch: The Planet’s Director of Product Management Urvish Vashi was reported as saying, “By partnering with system integrators, we’re providing a tremendous combination of products and services that will enable these trusted advisors to increase their revenue with a rich Microsoft suite that all SMBs need.” What exactly will this suite comprise of?
Carl Meadows: The Planet’s hosted Microsoft SBS suite includes a Microsoft SBS 2003 R2 Premium Edition coupled with a comprehensive suite of services that round out the hosted package. All hosted SBS servers include comprehensive anti-virus, SPAM filtering, daily backups, 24x7x365 incident response, and security and patch management. As I mentioned, it’s really an enterprise-level product set, and our scale allows us to provide it at affordable SMB pricing. E-mail and collaboration are important to customers, particularly with so many people who work outside a regular office environment. They’re on the road, working from home or from a client’s office, so our new offering is ideal. It’s all the services they need packaged in a single offering.
HostSearch: What do you expect will be the biggest benefit to companies utilizing your offering?
Carl Meadows: We’ve worked with Frost & Sullivans’ Stratecast Partners to evaluate our offering. In their research, they compared a three-year total cost of ownership with a do-it-yourself approach. For companies with 20 employees, it’s less than half the cost, which is a compelling value proposition. IT integrators are the trusted advisors, so now they can do what they do best – add the value with services and specialty applications that customers require – and actually spend time to build their business rather than managing the infrastructure.
HostSearch: And I expect support is going to be key to making this a success?
Carl Meadows: I’d say that support coupled with the quality of our data centers and network is what makes this a winner for customers and for IT integrators. And that’s exactly why we’ve selected the distribution model of partnering with system integrators to deliver the solution to their end-user customers who benefit from an enterprise-level experience.
HostSearch: This is certainly a growing market… How big is the small business market going to get, do you think?
Carl Meadows: The Planet’s primary area of focus is the SMB market, and a majority of our customers fall into this category. According to market search firm, The Yankee Group, approximately 65 percent of the North America SMBs are U.S.-based, which is equal to 5.9 million businesses. So, we’ll continue to deliver solutions and services that meet the needs of this high-growth market.
HostSearch: And The Planet will be there all the way?
Carl Meadows: As part of our commitment to the SMB market, The Planet has built a portfolio of products and services expressly tailored for our SMB customers. Coupled with our six world-class data centers, network, bandwidth from seven tier-1 providers and N+1 redundancy, we provide an enterprise-level experience that allows our customers to effectively compete against their larger, better-funded rivals. We also offer month-to-month contracts that deliver the flexibility that SMB customers require to keep pace with business fluctuations.
HostSearch: Carl, thanks for your time today and best of luck with your initiative.
Carl Meadows: Thanks for your time, John. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to share information on our hosted Microsoft SBS solution with the HostSearch audience.
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