Apr 22, 2008 : GroupSPARK Expands Reseller Channel

📅 April 22, 2008 - Microsoft Exchange hosting reseller groupSPARK (groupspark.com), which was acquired by mindSHIFT Technologies earlier this month, announced on Tuesday that it has expanded its reseller channel through a new agreement with IT solutions distributor Ingram Micro (ingrammicro.com).


Through the new agreement, groupSpark's private label software as a service offerings will be available through Ingram Micro's Seismic Virtual Services Warehouse. GroupSPARK's hosted Exchange Server 2007 and 2003, as well as Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Dynamics CRM 4.0 will also be available to Ingram Micro's partners in the US and Canada.

According to the press release, Ingram Micro's Seismic Virtual Services Warehouse is part of the distributor's North America Services Division, which provides VARs with a full range of managed IT services, professional IT labor services and warranty contract management services, enabling VARs to offer customers a variety of hosted software services, says groupSPARK.

As part of Seismic's hosted solutions portfolio, groupSPARK says it will maintain, monitor and upgrade all hardware and software enabling Seismic partners to offer these hosted software services to their customers without incurring any upfront expense, delay or risk in attempting to deploy the services on their own. GroupSPARK will also enable Seismic partners to offer two-way wireless synchronization with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Windows Mobile and Good Mobile Messaging, says the company.

"As the provider of hosted Exchange Server, SharePoint and CRM to Ingram Micro Seismic, we are dramatically increasing our reseller channel and reaching a new group of small and mid-size businesses," says Ravi Agarwal, senior executive officer, groupSPARK division of mindSHIFT Technologies. "Ingram Micro's confidence in our hosted services offering and our best-in-class service and support is the direct result of our commitment to and focus on true private label hosting of enterprise-class services."

Last month, groupSPARK said that it welcomed Microsoft's further entry into the hosted services market with the beta release of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online for small and medium-sized businesses.