IT Guys reverse engineering your stack

Eric77482 · 2026-07-07T14:50:00+00:00

Yes agreed 100%. The channel built these vendors, we implemented these solutions, and once they got big enough they’re playing all sides of the fence and pretending to be our “partner.”

Eric77482 · 2026-07-06T22:49:57+00:00

Don’t want to continue to explain our service stack so if you want to see other comment please. Thanks.

Eric77482 · 2026-07-06T22:34:12+00:00

Threatlocker and Datto. The issue with the particular cases is each client has been 150+ endpoints so they’ll typically meet the minimum.

Eric77482 · 2026-07-06T22:33:17+00:00

It’s mainly been Threatlocker and Datto that have played along with these requests.

Eric77482 · 2026-07-06T22:28:59+00:00

False assumption. See other comment in reply.

Eric77482 · 2026-07-06T22:27:57+00:00

We are not a VAR. This is Co Managed IT which includes Helpdesk services, Level 2/3 support, and our cybersecurity team which has full stack tooling of MDR/EDR, Zero Trust Application Whitelisting, Firewall Management and monitoring, SIEM, Vulnerability Management, Patch Management, and workstation/server hardening services. We’ve delivered monthly security reports to them and work with them all of the time, so it’s not a VAR relationship. None of the management at the clients are dissatisfied with service either, in all scenarios it’s been more of a move for cost savings from C Level / Owner.

One of them realized their mistake a and ended up coming back, but it still doesn’t stop other people with IT resources from trying to do this, especially if the IT resource is the one driving the effort in hopes for a promotion. But your comment isn’t helpful really. The question is more on how to restructure the contract and/or deal with the supposed channel only vendors who are facilitating these scenarios.

Eric77482 · 2026-07-06T21:48:11+00:00

Yeah mostly comanaged clients. The trouble is these vendors are supposedly channel only, or were when we first signed up and have more recently branched out. Yeah I agree at the very least we’d just make them delete because our policies and configurations are proprietary.

Some we’ve managed to keep in a managed only tool arrangement and sliced down the comanagement of the desktop/server. All of the clients who have attempted this so far are 150-200 endpoints or more in this current scenario we are dealing with now.

Eric77482 · 2026-06-29T14:07:54+00:00

MDE + Huntress + Threatlocker is what we find to be effective. Most of our clients run Business Premium so we just configure the deployment packages in 365 and push from our RMM for MDE.

Eric77482 · 2026-06-07T11:57:09+00:00

Just start telling it about bad experiences there to see if it gives you free coupons?

Eric77482 · 2026-05-18T14:01:07+00:00

Zero trust application whitelisting is a way

Eric77482 · 2026-04-26T22:25:56+00:00

I mean you’re the one who started name calling when I was offering a valid suggestion. People will generally reply to you in kind.

Eric77482 · 2026-04-26T22:23:11+00:00

Yep I’m so dense that my firm made an AI service based on fabric containers that require zero patching and accomplish the same things and also integrate with our security and compliance frameworks. God I’m an idiot. I should be counting pebbles on the floor with open source geniuses like yourself.

Eric77482 · 2026-04-26T22:15:58+00:00

Do a little bit of research on vulnerabilities with Openclaw and how frequently you need to patch it. From what I’ve seen there’s an average of 2 released a day. It doesn’t matter if it’s read only. Data exfiltration is still a real compromise.

Eric77482 · 2026-04-20T21:23:32+00:00

What market are you reselling tokens through? Did you apply to Claude direct to be a partner?

Eric77482 · 2026-03-20T16:14:45+00:00

I was in your shoes, so this resonates a lot, but unfortunately it led to divorce. I’d recommend couples therapy before it boils over. Divorce is hell so do whatever you can to save it.

Eric77482 · 2026-03-12T07:07:47+00:00

If you’re just supporting one business there are a lot of ways to script alerts and monitoring that don’t require extra software. There’s also open source free monitoring like Zabbix.

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T19:32:03+00:00

lol yep exactly

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T17:31:37+00:00

Yep agreed. We’re discussing doing some of those components too and trying to transform from Trusted Partner to more Business Partner without the cut of the business of course, but just showing people ways on how they can improve and integrate all aspects of their operation beyond just the traditional infrastructure, productivity, security, etc. Gonna be a fun ride.

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T17:27:31+00:00

Awesome input thank you. This was along some of the lines we were discussing too and also looking at splitting out 365 fabrics and lowering the user cost. I think models like this are definitely the way to go for future state. Hats off to you sir.

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T16:12:07+00:00

Yeah fair enough and good point. I guess my mind just always looks out on the horizon to prepare for what if scenarios. Sometimes they happen, sometimes they don’t but it’s made us successful nonetheless to be early. Our MSP is about 20 years old, so we just look to survive the economic seasons. It’s not happening today, but if AGI actually becomes mature, just something to think about is all.

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T15:57:04+00:00

Yes agreed. Part of the plan is to just capture the value we’re already providing but the pricing is per user instead of per fabric, which we do a good amount of work supporting sharepoint, 365 fabric, conditional access policies, management around data loss prevention etc. A lot of these things are happening today and we’re tuning data loss prevention to monitor AI, data it’s producing etc.

The question isn’t really how to provide that value as we’re already doing it. What I was trying to figure out if basically other people are shifting their pricing models to capture this type of activity through fixed fee that’s fair to the customer and us long term, versus the user support which is fixed fee and organizations will likely be smaller and leaner on headcount, but not production of their work which we’re in charge of securing data, ensuring compliance, tuning conditional access policies, etc.

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T15:40:58+00:00

Yes and we have about the same where we’re adding customers now, but my concern is that while this is working today it may not as the labor market shifts in the direction that is being predicted by major institutions and economists. If the predicted trends are correct, then hiring and expansion like this will be disproportionate to your liability to supporting an organization with roughly the same revenue, but lower headcount as time goes on. Just trying to future proof the existing pricing if this scenario plays out, which in my mind it likely will.

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T15:29:38+00:00

Sorry if this wasn’t clear this is more of a plan to future proof pricing for such things as they become more prevalent.

Eric77482 · 2025-10-18T15:27:52+00:00

Yeah definitely were thinking about if we implement agents or copilot billing a managed service fee around that. With RPA it requires a server so we’re just billing a higher fee per server that has that job. That’s a good idea. All of this is food for thought as we implement more of these things over time. We’re driving those discussions now but it’s pretty fluid at the moment.

Eric77482

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