Managed Services

Kaseya Connect 2009

Well as I have mentioned before, I love the product Kaseya. It is a great solution for providing Managed Services to your customers. With Kaseya you can monitor and control small to large amounts of workstations and servers as well as create an alerts dashboard to notify you about impending alerts in a client’s environment.

Well that same company that brought you the Kaseya product is now holding a conference in Las Vegas. It’s called Kaseya Connect 2009. I for one am going to try my best to go if I can find the time to get away from my duties here in Winnipeg. I would encourage all of you in the Managed Services industry to go as well. There should be a lot to learn from this conference.

One of the things I’m going to try and get out of it is how I can better use the Kaseya product to increase efficiencies in our Managed Services division. It should be a blast!

-RP

More on Managed Services

So I’m starting to see more and more companies coming up with Managed Services divisions in their IT consulting business as of late. Looks to me like some people see dollar signs and figure they can just jump on the band wagon and provide great service. This bothers me for a variety of reasons.

People new to the Managed Services game better know what they’re getting into, because if you’re not prepared you can easily make a bad name for your business in a hurry. If you quickly get the reputation for providing sub par service then other aspects of your business can suffer. Also if the service is not provided properly it can help sour the market for other businesses by inadvertently giving the name “Managed Services” a bad name based on just one company providing bad service.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are many people out there that can provide this service adequately. But I have seen (and they shall remain unnamed) some companies pick up the “Managed Services” mantle when they really have no business doing so. Instead they’re probably going to make a little money up front, and then cause their clients grief further down the road at the expense of their clients.

Managed services done properly should be a win-win situation for both parties (consulting company and the client). The consulting company reasonably makes some money off of the consulting and in turn the client receives a valuable service that is worth their hard earned dollars and helps their everyday business.

I hope the wannabes in this field are quickly identified and thrown out by the market. My 2 cents!

-RP

Monitoring in the Managed Services Industry

One of the key parts of any Managed Services offering is the ability to provide adequate monitoring to your clients. There are many pieces of software out there that claim they can do othe job of providing full monitoring for a Managed Services environment. These products are typically called Managed Services Platforms (MSPs).

 I’ve had the good fortune to use and try many MSPs and the one thing I have learned is that they all have their advantages. There really is no one good platform, it’s more about which platform makes the most sense for your Managed Services Business as they all have their own strengths, weaknesses, and focus.

 The key is to find a MSP that matches your offerings to your clients. The only way to do this is with a fully functional trial. When trying out software like this, your best bet is to install it in a test pilot scenario and use it as if you were supporting a real client. Give it all the same administrative attention you would give a product that you already own and are using. This way you can see how it works for you in your day to day consulting.

 Some of the more popular MSP companies out there are Kaseya, Level Platforms and N-Able.

 -RP

The Perception of Managed Services

Being in the consulting field as long as I have, I have encountered pretty much every reaction to Managed Services offerings. Some people openly embrace it and love the idea of a consulting company completely taking care of everything for them, and other people get quite scared fearing for their jobs and don’t want anything to do with it.

 Managed Services (in the IT world), if you haven’t heard of it before, is basically a company providing a service to your business to take care of all your IT needs and concerns for a flat monthly fee. The service isn’t time based typically, instead it’s based on how many users, machines, sites etc. you might have. The company providing this service will usually provide to you a set of service levels for different urgency levels of service required and will provide regular maintenance and support to your company. They will also act as trusted advisor to your company, using their experience to consult with you on which IT direction you should take your company based on your IT needs.

 The Managed Services company not only acts as your “tech”, but also acts as your “CIO” and everything in between. Doing this can allow you to focus on your core business instead of having to worry about IT. Managed Services typically works well for SMB companies and more and more people are starting to discover it. Whether you have an IT team or not, there is no need to fear. Managed Services companies work great with or without IT teams; it just changes the roles a little bit. If a company already has an existing IT team they can use the Managed Services company to provide support where they would otherwise not want to focus their valuable time and effort and instead be freed up to work on more “important” things.

 Managed Services isn’t about taking away IT jobs from hard working individuals; it’s about working with these individuals towards the common goals and success of your core business.

 -RP