MSP University Managed Services Blog

Join me for our Next Live Webinar Wednesday, April 9th - 8:00am PST!

Join me for our Next Live Webinar Wednesday, April 9th - 8:00am PST!

 

Leveraging strong authentication to reduce business and technical risk to MSP environments. 

Join us for our next live Managed Services Webinar on Wednesday, April 9^th at 8:00am PST, where our special guest will be our good friend Dana Epp, President of Scorpion Software and creator of AuthAnvil , who will discuss with us the inherent risk to MSPs and their clients when it comes to shared administrative credentials for servers, workstations and networked devices.

 

In 2006, 2007 and 2008 Dana has been honored with the award and distinction of "Microsoft Windows Security MVP" for his work and expertise in Windows security and continues to provide leadership in the community in regards to the application of information security principles and practices into software development and use.

 

As a computer security software architect, Dana has spent the last 15 years focusing on computer programming with a particular emphasis on security engineering to offer a safer computing environment for small business.

 

As a special bonus - all attendees will receive a FREE AUDIOBOOK DOWNLOAD OF OUR BEST-SELLING BOOK: The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER! - a $79.99 value!

 

AS AN EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS - all attendees will be entered into a live drawing during the Webinar to win an Authanvil Starter Kit: Includes 5 Scorpion Software AuthAnvil Tokens and a 1 year subscription to RWW-Guard - an $875 value!

 

CLICK HERE to register for this Webinar on Wednesday, April 9^th at 8:00am PST

 

In this webinar we will discuss the inherent risk to MSPs and their clients when it comes to shared administrative credentials for servers, workstations and networked devices.  We will explore how to reduce these risks to acceptable levels with Scorpion Software's AuthAnvil Strong Authentication System. Demonstrating the benefits of proxied delegation, we will show how MSPs can manage employee authentication to customer systems from a central location, and learn how to quickly revoke their access from all sites simultaneously when they leave or change roles in your company.

During this Webinar, attendees will:

• Learn how identity assurance is important to positively identify who is logging into managed resources

• Understand the best practices in managing strong authentication across multiple client sites

• Discover how to use proxied delegation to provide centrally managed authentication  and provide simultaneous revocation when needed

• Discuss how AuthAnvil can save you time and money through fewer non-billable hours when having to deal with HR issues of your IT admin staff

• Learn how AuthAnvil can be further leveraged to protect other sensitive resources like your webmail, VPN and line of business web applications, including MSP management systems like Kaseya and Level Platforms.

 There will be a Q&A session immediately following the presentation. CLICK HERE to register.

Exit Strategy Prep 101

Our good friend Arlin Sorensen, “The Peer Guy” and leader of Heartland Technology Solutions and the HTG Peer Groups that we and so many others belong to and receive so much value from, has some sage advice for all of us.

I speak quite a bit about “Exit Strategy” in our first book, “The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice”, and how the accumulation of long-term, annuity-based Managed Services Agreements increase company valuation, and illustrate a few examples on how to reach your target valuation. In Arlin’s latest post, he details 6 items we all need to address before we execute our Exit Strategies, and I agree with each and every one of them. Read Arlin’s entire article here.

These are items that must be in place in the event of our or our business partners’ deaths, disability, divorce, retirement or other scenario that leaves someone else to deal with the business affairs. Arlin’s list covers the following:

·         A Will

·         A Living Will and Power of Medical Attorney

·         Insurance

·         Buy/Sell Agreements

·         Exit Plan

·         Execution Team

Arlin goes on to say “There are many other things you may need to consider – find an expert to help you – probably a CPA, lawyer, insurance broker and banker at a minimum. Build a team and sit them down together to help you identify the things you need to do. Make plans, document them, and share them with the people you are asking to execute on your behalf. Do it now – before you need it. It is way too late after something happens. Hopefully you will never need it but if you do, it will be the best time you have ever spent! ”

Again, sage advice from a true IT Business Mentor. Thanks, Arlin – for all you do.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
www.mspu.us 

2008, The Economy and minimizing its impact on Service Revenue with vPro

I've just posted a timely blog on Intel's vPro Expert Center regarding the current state of the US economy, where it's heading and what we as Service Providers can do to grow our business during uncertain economic times with the right tools and technology, such as vPro, which lets us manage desktops and laptops when they're out of band (in an "off" state), and best practices processes and procedures, such as those disseminated by MSP University. Here is the intro to that blog:

There has been a lot of chatter lately on the boards and newsgroups I monitor about the economy in 2008, and whether we can classify its current status as an economic downturn, mini-recession, recession, etc. It's been generally accepted by noted economists that we are certainly experiencing an economic downturn, if measured by a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, and lasting longer than a few months. On the other hand, the technical indicator of a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by our GDP.

We'll need to wait for this quarter's numbers to see if the US economy will indeed be categorized as in recession, based upon last quarter's decline in growth, even though most economists agree we are heading that way, led by indicators such as the fall of the housing market to its lowest level since 1993, and consumer spending posting its smallest gain since 1991. The most telling news heralding the severity of our current economic climate is Sunday's announcement of the buyout of Bear Stearns, one of the world's largest and most venerable investment banks by JPMorgan, for the fire-sale price of only $2 a share.

So what does this economic downturn mean to us as service providers? Businesses traditionally are much more careful in their spending during times of economic uncertainty, and I.T. projects are normally among the first batch of initiatives to be placed on hold, as clients and prospects tighten their belts to weather the storm. It's important for us to identify this reality and shape our internal processes, deliverables and their supporting technologies, message and value proposition accordingly so that we can take advantage of these opportunities.

To read the entire blog, click here.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
www.mspu.us 

Join me for our next Live MSP University Webinar Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

Join me for our next live Managed Services Webinar on Tuesday, March 25^th at 8:00am PST, where our special guest will be Sameer Jayakar, Senior Manager, SMB Network Management for Cisco Systems. Mr. Jayakar will take us on a tour of Cisco's new Monitor Director Managed Services solution and discuss Cisco's Managed Services strategy for Partners.

Cisco's Monitor Director enables Managed Services Providers to deliver comprehensive 24-hour remote real-time monitoring and management of data and voice services for SMB customers with 5 to 250 users.

As a special bonus - all attendees will receive a FREE AUDIOBOOK DOWNLOAD OF OUR BEST-SELLING BOOK: The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice! - a $59.99 value!

CLICK HERE to register for this Webinar on Tuesday, March 25th, at 8:00am PST.

While other RMM solutions focus on Servers and Desktops, CMD focuses on the backbone of customer's businesses - their networks, data and voice traffic, and the equipment that manages it. This provides MSP's with a sorely needed solution for Network Management, allowing them to provide Premium Services and command greater annuities.

Cisco's Monitor Director supports both Cisco as well as non-Cisco IP-addressable devices such as Routers, Switches, Firewalls, Access Points, IP Phones and more, with the ability to generate Topological maps of customer environments, receive and escalate alert conditions, output meaningful reports and much, much more - all from a single console. Cisco's Monitor Director is the perfect addition to augment your existing Managed Services tools and processes, and integrates with existing PSA solutions, further increasing your service efficiencies, utilization and net profits.

Cisco Monitor Director consists of:

·         A centralized browser-accessible console, deployed at your location, which provides secure visibility into all of your SMB customer networks

·         An agent deployed inside each customer network, which collects and reports critical network data over a secure communications channel.

Features:

·         Real-time, color-coded network topology and status map

·         "Smart-Alerts" with graphical supporting information that dramatically reduces time to diagnose and fix problems

·         Alert escalation and notifications through e-mail and paging that integrates into common trouble-ticketing applications

·         End-of-sale and end-of-life notifications for selected Cisco devices

·         Automated reports that include network alert summary, device-availability analysis, utilization reports, and network topology

There will be a Q&A session immediately following the presentation. CLICK HERE to register.

I hope to see you there!

Erick Simpson

MSP University

www.mspu.us

Managed Services – What you need to know in 2008 to be successful

Managed Services – What you need to know in 2008 to be successful

Join my good friend Stuart Crawford and I tomorrow at 9am PST for a great discussion on what we see happening in the IT Service Delivery industry in 2008, and what we as Service Providers can do to weather periods of economic uncertainty, downturns and potential recessions.

Click here to register for tomorrow's webcast.

Also check out Stuart's latest blog post about achieving your business goals here.

See you on the call tomorrow!

Erick Simpson
MSP University
www.mspu.us

Is the concept of Indian Outsourcing threatened?

Sramana Mitra writes that the future of Indian Outsourcing is bleak. In fact, her article on Forbes.com Friday titled “The Coming Death Of Indian Outsourcing”, frames the basis of her argument by indicating that the cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be 1:6, whereas today it is 1:3 at best, with high attrition. She further predicts it will drop as low as 1:1.5 over time.

MItra goes on to say that that automatable Indian jobs will disappear over the next decade. We know that as MSP’s, this concept is not hard to believe – we do it here today. The article continues by stating that India’s tech industry is a “services” industry, and that Indians don’t do the thinking, their customers do, then India executes. As a result, India has failed to learn how to invent technology products of its own.

According to the article, Forbes’ recently published wage statistics for India reflect that salaries rose 15.1% in 2007, up from 14.4% the previous year, with 2008 forecasts of a hike of 15.2.%, signaling the fifth consecutive year of salary growth above 10% - incredible numbers in any job market, and when paired with the devaluation of the US dollar against the Indian rupee, these numbers are even more striking.

Mitra’s final thoughts forecast the cost advantage of Indian Outsourcing disappearing by 2015, leveraging a 15% year-over-year Indian salary hike rate and projecting the aforementioned continued decline in the cost advantage for Indian labor to 1:1.5 over time. Read the entire article here.

These are very interesting statistics and conclusions, as we ourselves have seen our Partners begin to adopt Outsourcing/Offshoring solutions in regions such as Russia and Eastern Europe in 2007. In fact, at the 2007 ConnectWise Summit, I had the opportunity to speak with representatives from a South African organization that were working to put together a back-office support offering for Managed Services RMM Vendor Level Platforms (www.levelplatforms.com).

These indicators signal to us that we will indeed see more Offshoring opportunities move away from India and to other developing nations, as well as back to the United States. IT Distributor Ingram Micro's Services Division is on an aggressive Partner acquisition strategy in this regard with its Seismic offering, which delivers traditional back-office outsourcing services to Solution Providers; and is attempting to differentiate itself from competitors by adding additional products and services valuable to Solution Providers to its Sesimic portfolio, such as email protection and archiving, online backup and restore services and a nationwide network of Partners who can provide onsite project delivery and support services (www.ingrammicro.com/servicesdivision).

Zenith Infotech, the recognized leader in Indian Offshoring and back-office support for MSP’s, has also recognized the reality that, as its back-office services become commoditized and it becomes more difficult to maintain its dominance through delivery of these services alone, it needs to diversify its product offerings to the channel. In this regard, Zenith has recently announced its partnership with A-Server, a Belgian company that has created a mash-up of Virtualization and SaaS technologies to create DaaS – Datacenter as a Service. This announcement follows closely behind Zenith’s BUDR Solution for Partners, whose newest version has just been released (www.zenithinfotech.com).

As both Ingram and Zenith compete for the back-office business of IT Solution Providers, they are either creating or Partnering with other organizations to add value-added products and services to their core Outsourcing attractiveness as a hedge against Sramana Mitra’s predictions.

What do you think? I’d like to hear your comments…

Erick Simpson