Shared services offer a number of wonderful benefits for small VARs and MSPs including low-cost, efficiency, breadth of support and 24/7 operation to name a few. These are great features when your business is growing and you are new to offering services. However as you grow, your needs may shift some and the shared services model [...]

In talking to a number of IT departments and MSPs over years, I hear the same few questions come up over and over when the SMB is evaluating a perspective service provider. Here is a list of what I hear most often and some thoughts about how to respond: Do you have proven experience? The [...]

Data protection services are a great mechanism to grow a managed service practice. Every SMB needs a viable data protection strategy, but few have it, so the available market is huge. Here are a few tips to help illustrate the benefits for your business: Expand Your Customer Base—Data Protection is one of the key strategic services you can offer [...]

Cloud computing is evolving rapidly with new options and providers and services appearing on the scene daily. Many are also disappearing. VARs and MSPs choosing to leverage a cloud provider to deliver a service to your customer, you need a consistent process and criteria to select the right cloud provider and evaluate them going forward. Here are [...]

I think we are entering a trans-formative time. While the economy is not roaring ahead, it is recovering and businesses are feeling better about investing. In particular, SMBs are now ready to invest in their business and they view IT as a key leverage point to build efficiency to be more competitive in the future. The great news for [...]

A lot is being written about the risk of using the cloud for core services like email, CRM or backup. Invariably the argument goes like this, “Watch out, because the cloud service you are relying on could go down or suffer a data loss.” I am not sure this argument really puts the risks in perspective. While [...]

The cloud has evolved to a point where I see no advantage to a new SMB investing in Exchange & SharePoint on premise solutions. Too many very good hosted solutions are available today to justify new investment in these systems. For existing SMBs with current on-premise systems, they should consider migrating to cloud based solutions [...]

We often talk to MSPs who are in the midst of considering a new RMM tool. They are typically reviewing the features, assessing how the new tool will fit with their current processes and trying to calculate an ROI based on the cost of the tool and some hypothetical increase in future productivity. My first [...]

In reading a post over on one of my favorite blogs, Talkin’ Cloud, I saw a discussion that caught my attention. The post itself is titled, Top 11 Questions MSPs Ask About Cloud Partner Programs, but the discussion touched on Service Level Agreements (SLA). In particular the seeming lack of importance customers give the actual SLA [...]

Back when we were launching services at NetEnrich, we often had conversations with VARs about how to get into selling managed services and what services to initially launch. The initial services in your practice are your core services. We actually have four services we recommend as a starting point. We call this group of services, [...]