Company credits reseller community and transition from on-premise
2011-07-12
At Microsoft’s World Partner Conference, Intermedia, a global leader in cloud services and the largest Microsoft Exchange hosting provider, announced its year-to-date performance today. New mailbox sales are up 55 percent in the first half of 2011 over the same period in 2010, driven in part by sales of the company’s Business Productivity Suite bundle that combines secure instant messaging and document management with email. New services such as backup, hosted PBX and email encryption are also making strong contributions.
Using its proprietary cloud infrastructure, Intermedia now manages over 350,000 premium Microsoft Exchange mailboxes on behalf of its customers and partners – more than any other hosted Exchange provider. Intermedia attributes its continued strong growth to the market success of its 7,000 channel partners that resell the company’s service – as well as the wave of small and mid-size businesses’ migrating to the cloud from on-premise technology.
Intermedia’s private label partners – those reselling Intermedia’s services under their own brand and billing – saw a 75 percent increase in mailboxes sold in the first half of 2011 over the same period in 2010. The receptivity of MSPs, VARs and other IT providers to Intermedia’s partner programs is driven by a number of factors, including the ability to control billing and access comprehensive behind-the-scenes support from Intermedia – such as assistance with end customers’ migrations. Intermedia’s direct sales are also strong, growing 42 percent over the same period.
Additionally, new services are off to a fast start. For instance, email encryption – developed to fully secure sensitive information as it travels across the Internet – is one of the fastest selling new additions in company history with 30 percent growth month-over-month since launch.
Roughly 75 percent of Intermedia’s new customers in this first half of 2011 formerly had on-premise Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 servers before moving to Intermedia’s hosted Exchange service, relying on Intermedia’s vaunted Exchange Concierge service to safely migrate to the cloud.
“Small and mid-sized businesses are continuing their transition from on-premise computing to the cloud, and our partners are well positioned to benefit,” says Phil Koen, chairman and CEO, Intermedia. “The MSPs, VARs and other providers we work with have close, in-person customer relationships they use to not only guide customers during the transition, but also assure the customers achieve the full cost and productivity benefits of the cloud. Email is a starting point these partners build on to then bring Intermedia capabilities like cloud backup, hosted PBX, secure IM, document management as well as other cloud services to their customers.”
Stop by to see Intermedia at the World Partner Conference, July 11-14 at booth #1123.