NetEnrich Inc. has re-launched its Small Business Services package, available immediately through Ingram Micro Inc. ‘s services division and cloud marketplace.
The SBS was originally launched alongside midmarket services (MMS) and enterprise elite services (EES) in April. “MMS and EES were really well-received,” said Justin Crotty, senior vice-president and general manager of NetEnrich. “SBS had complexities.”
“The services that we provide to the SMB, we’ve been offering for a long time,” Crotty said. The changes are now more around packaging and better pricing based on feedback from channel partners. The value to price ratio of the original launch wasn’t enough for partners, he said. After consultation with customers and partners, NetEnrich repackaged the offering.
Related story: Ingram Micro adds new services to cloud portfolio
The updated SBS package now includes more value for the pricing, he said. The new offering also includes tiered discounts for channel partners based on how many clients they bring in, a detail that SBS’ original launch lacked. “The price points are very aggressive,” he said. “The value bundle is very rich.”
The services are built for remote infrastructure management through the company’s service delivery framework for customers with 50 or fewer employees. The base package now includes one server and operating system with up to three “business critical applications” (such as Microsoft Exchange), one managed firewall and managed network connections, management and anti-virus protection for up to five desktops and operations reports.
The company uses what it calls a “service delivery framework,” or a “single pane of glass” view into the customer’s server and network environment and related applications. The system generates alerts when problems on the end user’s side arise.
“We have a lot of VARs out there who target the SMB market,” Crotty said. The SMB offering doesn’t have the same level of variability as the midmarket and enterprise offerings, simply because it’s very cost conscious, he said. The goal is also to free up valuable time for the service providers’ engineers and technical teams, Crotty added.
While the idea behind the SBS package is to provide enterprise-class services to SMBs, resellers and managed service providers will not have as much scope with the package as they would with those designed for larger markets, according to Crotty. “There’s not as much customization,” he said. “You can’t change what we deliver.” MSPs and VARs can however add additional apps, firewalls and more desktops on an à la carte basis, he said.
NetEnrich has been working with Ingram Micro for three years, and Crotty himself left the distributor’s managed services practice for NetEnrich last year. “They provide us a lot of value around finding clients,” he said of Ingram Micro. The goal is to have Ingram Micro be able to sell, represent and close business without too much management from NetEnrich, he said. NetEnrich’s vice-president of corporate marketing, Jennifer Anaya, also helped develop Ingram Micro’s services division in 2007.
NetEnrich launched its “Closet to Cloud” portfolio earlier this year, which was created to help partners deal with the complexity of their customers’ infrastructures. In June, the company also launched its “cloud practice,” for solution providers servicing the SMB market.
