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Read this story about Broadview Networks and Microsoft Intune. Published on the eChannel Line website and written by Mark Cox.

Home > News & Events > Announcements > Is Intune in tune with partner needs?

Next week, on March 23, Windows Intune, Microsoft's long-awaited PC management cloud solution, will be available for purchase or a free 30 day trial in more than 35 countries. A year after the original announcement, the issue of whether or not Intune will be a channel-friendly offering has long been put to rest. But will it be a strong competitor against existing offerings from established managed service providers?

Not surprisingly, Microsoft is bullish about the offering's chances.

"Intune is all about simplifying and helping businesses manage PCs using Windows cloud services , and it is based on a very strong partner model," said Elliot Katz, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Canada. "We believed from the outset of development, that the vast majority would do this on a partner model. We've had very, very positive feedback and interest in getting on the Windows Intune betas.

Katz said that while Intune builds on their managed services with Azure and other solutions like BPOS, the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, it also goes beyond them.

"This is very different from Azure," Katz said. "Intune will change systems management with nothing more than a browser and an internet connection. It will give partners more ways to make money and sell Microsoft products."

Katz said these will include, apart from the service itself, additional managed services, deployment services and add-on consulting services, in things like asset management, which is part of Intune.

"One thing that wasn't in the initial product which is in the final release is a multi-account console for partners that allows the partner to log into Intune through any internet session, and can tell if any of the PCs in any accounts are reporting any alerts or need any help," Katz said. "Partners can use the multi-unit account console and provide the service. It will expand the reach for cloud offerings as well, because this scales large. It's not a small business product. It's SMB now, and it will scale further into large enterprises as we go further down the roadmap."

But does it give traditional MSPs what they want? Peter Sandiford, CEO of Level Platforms, a platform provider which has worked closely with Microsoft on BPOS and Office 365, has his doubts.

"I don't think it's a good idea for MSPs," Sandiford said. "It's about ten times more expensive than us or our competitors, and it's got a lot less functionality. The price is unheard of in our market. It's just too pricey for the MSP market."

Sandiford thinks there is a market for the offering, just not in the MSP market.

"I think it's designed for a different customer, a midmarket IT guy who doesn't want to manage PCs," Sandiford said. "Never rule Microsoft out. If they don't get it right the first time, they get it going until they do. But I don't think the SMB market is that interested in managed PCs."

Tyson Choptain, a Systems Consultant at Broadview Networks, a Winnipeg Manitoba-based Microsoft partner, does see SMB demand for his company's model.

"We aren't a traditional MSP that uses something like Level Platforms or Nable," Choptain said. "We do a lot of preventative maintenance work, and for us, this is a great augment to the way we work. It lets us provide centralized services like patch management, and have that level of management, so that the customer and we don't have to invest in a specific MSP's solution."

Choptain sees the core market for Intune today as being fairly small customers, 5 user to probably 15-200 users if they are a very distributed customer, or 50 user offices that don't have a full time IT person.

"We see this part of the SMB market screaming for help, but they don't often know what help they need ," he said. "They need some help managing that environment, so they come to us and ask 'what do you have.'

Choptain said that while the per device cost of Intune is expensive on a traditional MSP model, with Broadview's type of business model, the customer isn't billed for it direct.

"The cost is indirect, mixed in with other costs," he said. "With this model, we can definitely justify the cost. Intune's a great product, but a lot of its power comes from where someone like us can augment it to meet the customers' needs."

This story was written by Mark Cox and published on the eChannel Line website.

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