‘You break it, you get it fixed—and you pay time and materials.’ This has been the traditional service model used by VARs. Yet faced with service commoditization, price competition, and high service provisioning costs, solutions providers and IT service providers have had to rapidly evolve their business models to stay in the game. And while managed services designed to help manage an IT environment have been delivered to the enterprise market for years, they have not been cost-effective for the small- to medium-sized business (SMB) market, until recently. Enter Level Platforms Inc.

Founded in 1999 as a managed service provider targeting the SMB market in the U.S. and Canada, the company shifted its strategy in 2003 to remote monitoring and management software. A year later, it introduced its first product and won Microsoft’s IMPACT Award for Networking Infrastructure Solution of the Year. Since then, the company has won numerous other awards, and boasts 2,500+ solution providers in 27 countries using its Managed Workplace software. Level Platforms all-inclusive subscription software license is available for either on-site installed or hosted versions of its application (the latter provided by third parties that want to provide a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. Ingram Micro, a large channel partner, is reselling Level Platforms’ solution to its customers.

According to Carlson Colomb, Director of Business Development at Level Platforms, “Microsoft has been an exceptional partner to us from day one, and the Microsoft Emerging Business Team has offered further great opportunities. In fact, EBT has helped Level Platforms bring the Managed Services model to Microsoft partners and their customers everywhere.”

Managed Workplace is based entirely on the Microsoft® .NET Framework, and leverages and integrates with other Microsoft technologies including Microsoft Windows® 2000 or 2003, WSUS, WMI, Baseline Security Analyzer, Internet Explorer®, SQL Server™ and more.

According to Carlson, all of these Microsoft technologies play a key role in Managed Workplace. In addition, Managed Workplace 6.0 adds new capabilities including enhanced usability, security and performance; support for monitoring and management of Microsoft Windows Vista®; an all new reporting engine based on Microsoft SQL Reporting Services; and a new base architecture to support the future of managed services — collaborative managed services.

Managed Workplace consists of two components. At the solution provider’s site, there is the Managed Workplace Service Center component on a Windows 2000/2003 Server or Small Business Server with access to Microsoft SQL database 2000 or 2005. This allows VARs to manage all of their end customers’ IT networks through a single, web-based central dashboard via the Internet Explorer browser. At the customer site, there is the Level Platforms Onsite Manager (OM) software (installed on a Windows Server) that monitors any and all devices on the site — PCs, servers, printers, routers, firewalls, and SaaS applications regardless of where hosted.

With Managed Workplace’s device and application auto-discovery and reporting capabilities, VARs can gain detailed insight into what hardware and software is installed in their customer networks. This allows them to handle everything from identifying upgrade opportunities, to compliance auditing, locating banned software, handling initial network assessments, providing asset reports for insurance purposes and more.

And continuing to leverage Microsoft technologies, Level Platforms has integrated with Microsoft Security Baseline Analyzer (MBSA) to monitor and alert on security deficiencies and required patches. To act on the alerts, the product integrates with the Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Explains Colomb, “With this, Microsoft partners are able to schedule and distribute patches to their SMB customer sites from Level Platforms’ central dashboard as well as receive alerts of any failures. This results in rapid distribution of WSUS technology, and therefore higher levels of security against new threats throughout the SMB market, as well as new service revenues for Microsoft Partners that service this market segment. We think we’re helping to drive VAR adoption of Microsoft applications as well — Managed Workplace is fully integrated with Microsoft CRM 3.0, as an optional component.“

All told, Level Platforms provides more than 150 pre-set configurations and templates for Microsoft and other third-party applications and technologies typically found in SMB networks.

As a Microsoft Gold Certified partner and Microsoft Small Business Specialist, Level Platforms is also working with the Microsoft Systems Center team to include deep integration with Systems Center Essentials (SCE).

Says Colomb, “Most of the IT service providers for SMBs, who are target users of our tool, are Microsoft partners. Their SMB customers typically are 100 percent Microsoft shops. Therefore, it was logical to base our product on the core platform most familiar to them. Also, building Managed Workplace on .NET allowed Level Platforms to very quickly develop a robust feature-rich solution to surpass other vendors already in the market a few years.“

Ingram Micro, a distributor of innovative IT services serving vendors and resellers in 140 countries, announced a fully hosted Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) platform as part of the Ingram Micro Seismic Virtual Services Warehouse. This turnkey, subscription-based service offering makes deploying managed services easy, affordable, and profitable for solution providers, and was developed in conjunction with Level Platforms.

Download Level Platforms' success story in PDF format.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Windows Server, and Windows Vista are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Document published November 2007