February 07, 2006 New Mirapoint Program Touts MSP Tricks By Dan Neel Courtesy of A new program from Mirapoint highlights MSP capabilities that have been quietly shipping in the vendor's secure messaging appliances. Mirapoint's Managed e-mail and e-mail Security Services Partner Program, unveiled Tuesday, is an effort to raise awareness among VARs that Mirapoint appliances can be used to offer secure, remotely managed e-mail services to customers, said Craig Carpenter, director of corporate marketing and global channels for Mirapoint, Sunnyvale, Calif. "These boxes have been ripe to run managed services for many years," said Carpenter. "And we want to see more partners do that." Mirapoint’s Message Server and RazorGate appliances are resold by more than 100 VAR partners in the United States, but only about 10 of them use the appliances as MSPs, said Carpenter. With the new program Mirapoint aims to change that, and is offering free technical certification and sales training to VARs that purchase an appliance with the intention of offering managed e-mail services, he said. Additionally, for smaller VARs less inclined to make the initial $10,000 or so investment in a Mirapoint appliance, the vendor is offering up its existing MSP VAR partners as wholesalers, he said. "Our entry-level box starts at about $10,000, so smaller resellers who prefer not to make that investment can resell the services being provided by another MSP of ours," explained Carpenter. If a VAR chooses not to buy a Mirapoint appliance but wants to resell managed e-mail services to customers, Mirapoint will direct the VAR to its larger MSPs. Then, the MSP, acting as a wholesaler, could charge, for example, $5 per managed e-mail account, which the reseller can mark up to $9 per account, explained Carpenter. The Mirapoint appliances work in MSP fashion by redirecting messaging traffic from the customer site to the appliances, which can scale to support tens of thousands of users, said Carpenter. The system can be designed to where VARs reselling the managed e-mails services of a wholesaler can appear to be hosting the service themselves, he said. For VARs willing to purchase their own appliance, Mirapoint, under the new program, will provide free certification -- a process that takes about one day on site with the VAR, said Carpenter. Free sales training is also provided, along with MSP marketing strategies and other sales assistance, he said. Emphasis on rapid return on investment is key to the new program, he said. E-mail This Story Print This Story Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Content Management Made Easy With Xerox Vendors, VARs Pushing Secure IM As Necessity IBM Goal: IM Interop Across The Board RIM Says BlackBerry Work-Around Ready If Needed Opinion: Unified messaging | What's Old Is New Opinion: Can You Hear Me?     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.