IT's Perfect Storm: Managed Services, SaaS and Cloud Computing

Jeff Kaplan, E-Commerce Times November 13, 2009

ConnectWise has become an evangelist heralding an "IT Nation" revolution. At the center of the transformation is the leveraging of partner relationships -- value-added resellers, managed service providers and independent software vendors -- to coax the IT departments of SMBs and large enterprises to the cloud.

In a previous column, I described why many IT professionals within small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as in large-scale enterprises, are beginning to embrace Software as a Service, and why managed service providers (MSPs) can't afford to ignore SaaS.

I recently attended an industry event that brought my previous observations to life and added a new dimension -- cloud computing -- to these dynamics.

The event was the fifth annual ConnectWise Partner Summit in Orlando, Fla.