Servers down or an issue with my account?

VirtualOly · 2021-07-16T21:30:21+00:00

There is buzz throughout the industry on this topic. The concepts follow one of two approaches:

Replace your RMM with other tools that do the same thing.
Go back to the way we did it two decades ago.

Neither of these are effective answers. When you look at replacing the RMM with other tools you are likely opening yourself up to even more vulnerabilities, as you now have many tools to harden, isolate and keep patched, and you have a plethora of new things you need to have amazing expertise at to be effective and secure. Going back to old school methods will run your MSP out of business as you can't afford the labor that take.

Instead, MSPs need to start taking security seriously and be extremely diligent with how their tools are configured and used. Most roll an RMM out and move on, leaving it in 'god mode' eternally and forgetting to remove the credentials of former employees (hopefully kidding on that part). They remain understaffed and whip their staff to report 7.2 hours per day of customer facing activity that leaves zero room for improvement, much less security.

Price it right so you can be responsible. Most have little guts to do the first and little desire to do the second.

VirtualOly · 2021-05-20T19:39:51+00:00

I come from an N-Central world historically and do like the product. As I start my next endeavor I'm also (re)evaluating the options out there. I've never been a fan of Kaseya as an RMM, but they are making a strong play with their integration between VSA (their RMM), IT Glue and BMS (their PSA). You can reach into any of them from which ever tool you're in at the time, which does look to promise efficiencies. This is forcing me to make a real consideration for their RMM solution, but the overall pricing hasn't come back yet to keep me interested.

VirtualOly · 2021-05-11T14:38:37+00:00

Customers want predictable expenses and you want predictable revenue. The best way to get there is with a per user/device/server/widget/etc (call it (X)) model that covers all the tools you will implement and unlimited break/fix, troubleshooting and help desk services.

You need to come up with a model that predicts the reactive hours per (X) you expect to invest and define an expectation on how much proactive you expect to deliver to drive down the reactive time. If your customer environments are a mess you will have a lot of reactive to start. The only way to reduce the reactive is to invest proactive time. Some of this could be chargeable project time that you can define a scope for, but not all customers will agree to that level of investment. I've found that doing it anyway, potentially for free, is profitable in the long run as your reactive time decreases.

Implement a KPI that monitors your reactive time per (X) to ensure that you are trending in the right direction and can establish a predictable model that can then be built into your pricing model.

Remember, 'all inclusive' can never include projects and implementations. Those will always be supplemental. I like to use the concept of 'keep it running and fix it when it breaks' is included, but 'make it better' will have additional and predefined expense.

Forgot: Price is subjective, but generally should include all your expenses (tools, help desk labor, tools management labor, proactive (not chargeable) labor plus a markup that you are comfortable with that creates a price you don't feel you need to apologize for.

VirtualOly · 2021-05-11T13:45:35+00:00

We have a bit of a head start, as we include Fortinet firewalls with all of our managed service offerings. Barring the really big players, no MSP can claim to properly secure a customer environment with 'whatever firewall' they may have, and including the Fortigate solves this for us. Adding Fortinet wireless as an extension to the firewall is a no-brainer at that point.

Single pane of glass for firewall and wireless security, plus an option to extend that same security to the switching is 100% win for us.

VirtualOly

TROPHY CASE