Denver, Colorado, July 10, 2007 – LPI Level Platforms Inc. today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to leverage the advanced systems management capabilities of Microsoft Systems Center Essentials in Level Platforms award winning managed services software.
Level Platforms will expand its comprehensive managed services software solution, Managed Workplace, so that solution providers will have the ability to easily configure and access Systems Center Essentials (Essentials) features directly from Level Platforms central management dashboard.
With approximately 2500 solution provider partners in 23 countries, Level Platforms is the global leader in the market for remote monitoring and management software for solution providers offering managed services to their small and midsized customers.
Level Platforms is a Gold Certified Microsoft Partner with deep commitment to Microsoft standards and technologies. Based on their ground breaking .NET managed services software application, Level Platforms was awarded Microsoft’s Worldwide ISV Small Business Solution of the Year in 2005 followed by the Worldwide ISV Sales and Marketing Partner of the Year award in 2006.
“We attribute much of our success to our strong commitment to leveraging Microsoft technologies for solution providers offering managed services to their small and mid-sized business customers,” said Peter Sandiford, CEO of Level Platforms. “This agreement represents the next step in this relationship as we accelerate our joint efforts to help Microsoft Partners transition to managed services so that they can deliver the ultimate IT experience to the millions of businesses they serve.”
Level Platforms’ success is based on addressing three key business drivers demanded by SMB managed services providers – extreme ease of use, comprehensive end-to-end features and full multi vendor integration. As a result of this agreement, solution providers will be able to leverage the advanced Microsoft monitoring features of Essentials while taking full advantage of the simple and intuitive user interface, rich feature set and deep multi vendor capabilities of Managed Workplace.
“Businesses are facing increasingly complex IT environments and need solutions that enable them to more easily manage their infrastructure while reducing costs and maximizing their IT resources,” said Eric Berg, director of product management for Microsoft System Center products. “Level Platforms has a large customer base of service providers serving small and mid-sized businesses and we are excited to help them bring Essentials to these customers. Many of Level Platforms service provider partners serve customers with less than 100 PCs and this Agreement compliments our own System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007 offering, which enables service providers serving the upper segments of the Small and Medium Business market. Now service providers of all sizes will be able to benefit from Systems Center Essentials.”
“Ingram Micro selected Level Platforms as a key piece for our Seismic Managed Services platform based on their best-of-breed remote monitoring and management capabilities,” said Justin Crotty, vice president, services at Ingram Micro Inc. “This is a solid, strategic decision by Microsoft having chosen to support Level Platforms as their partner for SMB managed services rather than seeking to create a competitive solution.”
“Level Platforms has created the standard for SMB managed services software,” said Mark Crall, President of Tech Care Team a managed services provider in Charlotte and active participant in the SMB Small Business Microsoft Partner community. “Essentials is great technology for the end user, but the vast majority of SMBs in the sub 100 market rely on companies like Tech Care Team to look after their IT requirements. Level Platforms integrates with most vendor management technologies and delivers a single dashboard for monitoring and management. We look forward to utilizing the extended capabilities and applaud Microsoft for its continued support of its partner community.”
“In partnership with Level Platforms, Netsurit operates one of the largest managed services operations in South Africa with hundreds of small and mid sized companies managed from our data center in Johannesburg,” commented Orrin Klopper, President of Netsurit and 2006 Winner of Microsoft’s Worldwide Networking Infrastructure Solutions Sales and Marketing Partner of the Year. “We have implemented ITIL and the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) throughout our business to deliver the highest services standards possible. We consider Level Platforms to be one of the evolving standards for remote monitoring and management and welcome anything that extends their integration with management technologies from our key vendors.”
“We have worked with Level Platforms for over two years as the core platform for the development of our SMB managed services business,” commented Amy Luby, Founder and CEO of Mobitech in Omaha. “Based on our success we created Mobilize SMB, a rapidly growing network of other SMB solution providers that are adopting our best practices to jump start their own managed services businesses. My partner Chad Gross is a Microsoft SBS MVP and Microsoft is a big part of our business. The assurance from Microsoft and Level Platforms that they will work together in close partnership as Essentials enters the marketplace is great news for us and small business service providers everywhere.”
“SMB Nation is proud of our contribution to help Microsoft’s small business partners worldwide grow their businesses profitably by maximizing their effective use of Microsoft technologies,” said Harry Brelsford, CEO of SMB Nation in Seattle. “Level Platforms is highly regarded within the Microsoft small business partner community. As managed services continues its rapid adoption among the SMB solution provider community, we are extremely pleased to see the continued strategic cooperation between Microsoft and Level Platforms focused on the success of their combined partners.”
About Level Platforms
Managed Workplace provides everything a managed services provider needs to remotely monitor and manage their end customers’ IT networks through a single web based central dashboard. The dashboard presents all customer site data including integrated performance and security monitoring, availability status, real-time alerting, graphical performance reporting, trouble ticketing, and asset inventory (hardware, software, network devices, and patches) , monitoring of both local and hosted web sites as well as integrated patch management, remote control and scripting for service automation of routine tasks. Managed Workplace allows the solution provider to maintain high customer availability at a low cost while achieving long term, high margin recurring revenues and more responsive customer service. Comprehensive managed services training and personalized business coaching, combined with simple per site subscription pricing makes it easy for any solution provider to offer high-profit, customized managed services to end customers of any size. For more information, visit Level Platforms at
www.levelplatforms.com .