Staples becomes an MSP?

Staples purchased Thrive Networks last year and is now rolling out 3 new managed services – Thrive Protect, Thrive Onsite and Thrive Online Backup. They are billing it as “not the Geek Squad”, who they see as reactive. To quote “What we’re offering is a proactive IT services solution that eliminates or reduces downtime for businesses.”

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/CDN/News.asp?id=50117

 

http://www.thrivenetworks.com/index.html

 

Seems like they use all the usual suspects: AVG, Kaseya, N-Able, as well as Mozy for offsite backup.

 

How real is this threat? Is it more immediate than the rumblings from Dell? It will be interesting to see how a big box retailer will succeed as an msp.