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Improve your disaster recovery reliability with Veeam

The only two certainties in life are death and taxes. In IT, you can add disasters to this short list of life’s universal anxieties. Ensuring disaster recovery reliability is critical to ensure your organisations enduring viability in your chosen marketplace.

Regardless of the size of your budget, people power and level of IT acumen, you will experience application downtime at some point. Amazon’s recent east coast outage is testimony to the fact that even the best and brightest occasionally stumble.

The irony is that while many organizations make significant investments in their disaster recovery (DR) capabilities, most have a mixed track record, at best, with meeting their recovery service level agreements (SLAs). As this chart from ESG illustrates, only 65% of business continuity (BC) and DR tests are deemed successful.

In his report, “The Evolving Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Landscape,” Jason Buffington broke down respondents to his DR survey into two camps: “green check markers” and “red x’ers.”

Citing his research, Jason recently shared with me: “Green Checkers assuredly don’t test as thoroughly, thus resulting in a higher passing rate during tests, but failures when they need it most — whereas Red X’ers are likely get a lower passing rate (because they are intentionally looking for what can be improved), thereby assuring a more likely successful recovery when it really matters. One of the reasons for lighter testing is seeking the easy route — the other is the cumbersomeness of testing. If it wasn’t cumbersome, most of us would likely test more.”

DR testing can indeed be cumbersome. In addition to being time consuming, it can also be costly and fraught with risk. The risk of inadvertently taking down a production system during a DR drill is incentive enough to keep testing to a minimum.

But what if there was a cost-effective way to do DR testing that mitigates risk and dramatically reduces the preparation work and the time required to test the recoverability of critical application services?

By taking the risk, cost and hassle out of testing application recoverability, Veeam’s On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots feature is a great way for organizations to leverage their existing investments in NetApp, Nimble Storage, Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Storage to attain the following three business benefits:

Risk mitigation: Many IT decision makers have expressed concerns around their ability to meet end-user SLAs. By enabling organizations to rapidly spin-up virtual test labs that are completely isolated from production, businesses can safely test their application recoverability and proactively address any of their DR vulnerabilities.
Improved ROI: In addition to on-demand DR testing, Veeam can also be utilized to instantly stand-up test/dev environments on a near real-time copy of production data to help accelerate application development cycles. This helps to improve time-to-market while delivering a higher return on your storage investments.
Maintain compliance: Veeam’s integration with modern storage enables organizations to achieve recovery time and point objectives (RTPO) of under 15 minutes for all applications and data. Imagine showing your IT auditor in real-time how quickly you can recover critical business services. For many firms, this capability alone would pay for itself many times over.

Back when I was in school, 65% was considered a passing grade. In the business world, a 65% DR success grade is literally flirting with disaster. DR proficiency may require lots of practice but it also requires Availability software, like Veeam’s, that works hand-in-glove with your storage infrastructure to make application recoveries simpler, more predictable and less risky.

This article was provided by our service partner Veeam.

Considerations when Picking a Managed VoIP PBX

Not all things are created equal, and when considering a new phone system for your business, not all Cloud Based Managed VoIP Providers are the same. Before you sign a contract, there can be huge differences among Hosted VoIP Providers.

Features – What features are most important to your business? Does your business need auto attendant, voicemail sent to an email, mobile twinning (sending calls to both a cell phone and desk phone at the same time)? Does the receptionist want to see who is on the phone? How about the ability of having “hot desking”, the ability of logging into anyone’s phone and have it appear as your own. This feature works great for medical practices who have rotating staff working the front desk. Don’t forget to ask office workers what features they could use.

Equipment – What about the brand of phones that are used? Is the equipment proprietary or can it be used with other Managed VoIP services providers? Should you purchase the equipment or rent each handset and what are the advantages? Make sure you are getting quality VoIP phones from a quality manufacture or have them outsourced to australian voip phones who will take care of your communication needs at your business and help you improve the way your team connects with each other, the last thing you want to happen is finding out the phones you bought are not good quality. Does each user on the system need a fancy phone with lots of features, most employees only use two or three features. Do you really need a cool looking conference room phone or will a basic handset do the trick? Many newer phones have excellent speaker phones, so a basic handset may work fine. A good provider should be able to offer multiple phone options as your business grows and expands as mobile command centers explained by Connected Solutions Group.

Pricing – Many providers offer confusing or different pricing options. Some offer unlimited options that may be simple to understand but you pay for features not needed. Another consideration is whether to rent or buy phones. With some customers it makes sense to buy, but what happens when the phone breaks, who is responsible? The cost of renting phones has dropped dramatically, however pricing and features vary greatly. Make sure you understand how the companies long distance calling is priced; contrary to what many believe, Hosted VoIP is not free phone service. You can also get VoIP services and learn more about the healthcare solutions and its benefits in this field.

Call Quality – This is where customers get burned and have poor VoIP call quality and get disappointed. It is important to know the difference between BYOY (Bring you own Bandwidth) compared to “managed VoIP” using a private MPLS data network. Some carriers provide an extra layer of call quality by using a managed router. Make sure you know the difference between managed and unmanaged services, there can be a big difference in call quality.

Vendor Experience – This is one of the most important considerations when considering a Managed VoIP phone system. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) has been around for many years and many service providers are now selling Hosted VoIP via the internet, out of car trunks, basements and garages. It would be disastrous for a business if the phone company went out of business and had control of your phone numbers? Make sure you find out how long the Hosted PBX provider has been in business, how many customers they support and the types of customers.

Disaster Recovery – It is very important to make sure you understand the providers network and how many POP’s (point-of-presence) they own and manage. Does the hosted PBX provider have built in intelligence that can determine when a business’s on-site phones stop working and can they re-rout calls to different numbers? How many network operation centers does the provider have, east and west coast only?

Summary – Managed VoIP PBX offers advanced features previously only available to much larger business all for a great value. Hosted or Cloud PBX phone service compared to traditional solutions offers no-hassle phone service without ongoing maintenance, service contracts, costly hardware and onsite trip charges. While a hosted PBX offers customers ease of management; an onsite or Premise PBX is can still be a more cost efficient solution.

Advantages of Managed Storage for Business

Cloud service and managed storage providers offer valuable IT solutions for businesses of all sizes. Originally thought of as more for personal and less for business, cloud and managed storage for business is following in the footsteps of many personal tech. adapted for business (you can check this lead conversion squared review to get started on that). Many businesses can benefit from comprehensive cloud services – hosted applications, Infrastructure as a Service and more – and the transition often begins with data storage needs.

COST SAVINGS

The first benefit, and perhaps most important in the minds of many business owners, is the cost advantage. Cloud storage is generally more affordable because providers distribute the costs of their infrastructure and services across many businesses.

Moving your business to the could eliminates the cost of hardware and maintenance. Removing these capital expenditures and the associated service salaries from your technology expenses can translate into significant cost savings and increased productivity.

SIMPLIFIED CONVENIENCE

All you will need within your office is a computer and an internet connection. Much of your server hardware will no longer be necessary, not only saving you physical space but eliminating the need for maintenance and employee attention. Your managed storage provider will maintain, manage and support your business. This frees up employees who would otherwise cover the tasks necessary for keeping your data safe and your server(s) up and running.

ENHANCED SECURITY

Instead of having hardware within your office, cloud storage is housed in a data center, providing enterprise level security, which is cost prohibitive for most individual businesses. There is also no single point of failure in the cloud because your data is backed up to multiple servers. This means that if one server crashes, your data stays safe because it is stored in other locations. The potential risk of hardware malfunction minimizes because your data is safely stored in redundant locations.

MOBILITY OPPORTUNITIES

The mobility benefits provided by the cloud are rapidly increasing for businesses of all sizes. In today’s world of connectivity, we are able to work (and play) whenever and wherever. Platforms like WhatsApp, that is verified by the WhatsApp Green Tick Mark and other platforms have made communication easy. While you’re waiting for a flight at the airport or at home with a sick child, you can still work – and work efficiently. Before cloud storage came along, working outside the office was problematic and more time consuming than it needed to be. Remember having to save your files on your laptop and then returning to work and needing to transfer your updated files to ensure others have access to the latest version?

This example highlights another one of the advantages of cloud storage and VOIP phones Springfield experts told us about – enabling mobility. If you work from multiple devices – i.e. phone, tablet and desktop computer – you won’t have to worry about manually adding the latest file onto each device. Instead, the newest version of your document is stored in the cloud and will be easily accessible from any of your devices.

SCALABLE SERVICE

With cloud storage, you pay for what you use, as you use it. You do not need to anticipate how much storage space you will need for the year and risk paying for unused space or running short. You can adjust the resources available through cloud storage providers and pay based on your current needs, modifying as they change.

Network Security : OpenDNS

Why Firewalls and Antivirus are not enough in our fight for the best network security ?

Understanding Malicious Attacks to Stay One Step Ahead

Network (firewall) and endpoint (antivirus) defenses react to malicious communications and code after attacks have been launched. OpenDNS observes Internet infrastructure before attacks are launched and prevent those malicious internet connections happening in the first first. Learning all the steps of an attack is key to understanding how OpenDNS can bolster your existing defenses.

Each step of the attackers operation provides an opportunity for network security providers to find the attack and defend the intrusion.

High level summary of how attacks are laid out.

—> RECON: Many reconnaissance activities are used to learn about the attack target
—> STAGE: Multiple kits or custom code is used to build payloads. And multiple networks and systems are staged to host initial payloads, malware drop hosts, and botnet controllers
—> LAUNCH: Various Web and email techniques are used to launch the attack
—> EXPLOIT: Both zero-day and known vulnerabilities are exploited or users are tricked
—> INSTALL: Usually the initial payload connects to another host to install specific malware
—> CALLBACK : Nearly every time the compromised system callbacks to a botnet server
—> PERSIST : Finally, a variety of techniques are used to repeat through steps 4 to 7

We do not have to understand each tool and technique that attackers develop. The takeaway from this is to simply understand how multiple and often repeated, steps are necessary for attackers to achieve their objectives undermining your existing network security tools.

Compromises happen in seconds. Breaches start minutes later and can continue undetected for months. Operating in a state of continuous compromise may be normal for many. but no one should accept a state of persistent breach.

Existing defenses cannot block all attacks.

Firewalls and AntiVirus stop many attacks during several steps of the ‘kill chain’, but the volume and velocity of new attack tools and techniques enable some to go undetected for minutes or even months.

Firewalls know whether the IP of a network connection matches a blacklist or reputation feed. Yet, providers must wait until an attack is launched before collecting and analyzing a copy of the traffic. Then, the provider will gain intelligence of the infrastructure used.

Antivirus solutions know whether the hash of the payload match a signature database or heuristic. Yet providers must wait until a system is exploited before collecting and and analyzing a sample of the code before gaining intelligence about the payload used.

The OpenDNS Solution

Stop 50 to 98 percent more attacks than firewalls and antivirus alone by pointing your DNS traffic to OpenDNS.
OpenDNS does not wait until after attacks launch, malware install, or infected systems callback to learn how to defend against attack. By analyzing a cross-section of the world’s Internet activity, OpenDNS continuously observe new relationships forming between domain names, IP addresses, and autonomous system numbers (ASNs). This visibility enables us to discover, and often predict, where attacks are staged and will emerge before they even launch.

Why keep firewalls and antivirus at all?

Once we prove our effectiveness, we are often asked: “can we get rid of our firewall or antivirus solutions?” While these existing defenses cannot stop every attack, they are still useful—if not critical—in defending against multi-step attacks. A big reason is threats never expire—every piece of malware ever created is still circulating online or offline. Signature-based solutions are still effective at preventing most known threats from infecting your systems no matter by which vector it arrives: email, website or thumbdrive. And firewalls are effective at defending both within and at the perimeter of your network. They can detect recon activities such as IP or port scans, deny lateral movements by segmenting the network, and enforce access control lists.

“One of AV’s biggest downfalls is the fact that it is reactive in nature; accuracy is heavily dependent on whether the vendor has already seen the threat in the past. Heuristics or behavioral analysis can sometimes identify new malware, but this is still not adequate because even the very best engines are still not able to catch all zero-day malware.”

Your Solution:
Re-balance investment of existing versus new defenses:
Here are a couple examples of how many customers free up budget for new defenses.

• Site-based Microsoft licenses entitle customers to signature-based protection at no extra cost. Microsoft may not be the #1 ranked product, but it offers good protection against known threats. OpenDNS defends against both known and emergent threats.

• NSS Labs reports that SSL decryption degrades network performance by 80%, on average. OpenDNS blocks malicious HTTPS-based connections by defending against attacks over any port or protocol. By avoiding decryption, appliance lifespans can be greatly extended.

“OpenDNS provides a cloud-delivered network security service that blocks advanced attacks, as well as malware, botnets and phishing threats regardless of port, protocol or application. Their predictive intelligence uses machine learning to automate protection against emergent threats before your organization is attacked. OpenDNS protects all your devices globally without hardware to install or software to maintain.”

Managed Security Services

“The Internet of Things is the biggest game changer for the future of security,” emphasizes David Bennett, vice president of Worldwide Consumer and SMB Sales at Webroot. “We have to figure out how to deal with smart TVs, printers, thermostats and household appliances, all with Internet connectivity, which all represent potential security exposures.”

Simply put, the days of waiting for an attack to happen, mitigating its impact and then cleaning up the mess afterward are gone. Nor is it practical to just lock the virtual door with a firewall and hope nothing gets in–the stakes are too high. The goal instead must be to predict potential exposure, and that requires comprehensive efforts to gather threat intelligence. According to Bennett, such efforts should be:

Real time: Because the velocity and volume of threats increases on a daily basis, the technologies used to protect systems must be updated by the minute. The ability to adjust to the nature and type of new threats as they appear is key. Data should be aggregated from sources globally and delivered as actionable information to the security professional.
Contextual: Data must be parsed through sophisticated computer analytics to ensure humans can make decisions based on actionable intelligence. An analyst has to be given data with pre-connected dots in order to act quickly. There’s little time for onsite security professionals to analyze reams of data when they suspect an attack is underway. By the time they figure out what’s going on, the damage is done.
Big data-driven: It’s not enough for a company to understand only what’s happening in its own environment; an attack on one of its competitors or peers could mean it’s next. To analyze complex threat patterns, threat intelligence technology must be cloud-based and should aggregate activities from across companies and across geographies.
“Security professionals of the future must act like intelligence officers or analysts,” Bennett notes. “They have to consume information that’s already been parsed for them, and make decisions based on that intelligence. Success will depend on how they are fed the data. How is it presented? Is it relevant? Have the irrelevant data points already been removed? Only then will they be able to make decisions in time to prevent breaches.”

What This Means for MSPs

MSP services are particularly valuable to SMBs that lack the internal resources needed to effectively manage complex systems, or for any customers seeking to defer capital expenses in favor of leveraging their operational budgets. As such, cybersecurity is a perfect discipline to utilize the managed services model. “The biggest untapped opportunity for our partners today is providing security as a managed service,” observes Bennett. “Users are overwhelmed and just not capable of keeping on top of the rapid changes in the nature of threats.”

MSPs that offer managed security services address one of the major problems users face today: the lack of access to talented security professionals. Especially for SMB customers, finding and competing for talent with larger firms can be daunting. “Hiring and retaining the right personnel should not be a vulnerability in and of itself,” says Bennett. “Users who leverage managed security services remain protected through transitions in their IT staff and lower the risk of losing institutional knowledge critical to their security procedures. In addition, managed security services represents one of the largest and most profitable growth opportunities today for solution providers.”

MSPs that include Webroot SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint Protection solutions as part of their service offerings to clients are ideally positioned to take full advantage of these growth opportunities. In effect, Webroot technology gives MSPs their own dedicated security firm to monitor their customers’ environments. As Bennett explains, “We don’t just collect data—we scrub it, make correlations globally, and pass on exactly what our customers need to reduce exposures. It’s a big data approach to security, and it’s the only effective means to combat the ever-changing threats companies face.”

Set Up Extensions on a Cloud Based FreePBX

One of the best things about modern VoIP systems is how flexible they are when it comes to how you deploy them. You can use them on an appliance, virtualized, or on a cloud-based service like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. Each configuration has a slightly different technique to making everything work, and one of the first challenges is registering extensions. For this post, we’ll focus on the general concepts of setting up extensions for a cloud based (hosted) solution with FreePBX.
If you’ve never heard of FreePBX, and you’re in the market for a new VoIP system, you should start doing a little research ( and also call VoIP Supply). To be brief, it’s a turn-key PBX solution that uses Asterisk, a free SIP based VoIP platform. Sangoma, the makers of FreePBX have created a web user interface for Asterisk to simplify configuration. They’ve also added an entire security architecture, and have added a lot of features above and beyond what pure Asterisk (no user interface) provides, such as Endpoint Manager, which is a way to centrally configure and manage IP Phones.

FreePBX isn’t the only product out there to do this, there’s quite a few out there actually, but FreePBX has really raised the bar in the past few years and has become a very series solution for the enterprise. Don’t let the word “Free” in FreePBX lead you to think it’s a cheaply created system.

FIRST, A LITTLE ABOUT VOIP CLOUD SECURITY:

There’s a huge benefit to hosting a VoIP system in the cloud, you have to deal with very little NAT. Why is that good? SIP and NAT generally do not cooperate with each other. It’s very common for SIP header information to be incorrect without a device such as a session border controller (SBC), or a SIP application layer gateway (SIP ALG). When deploying a system on premise, you will always need to port forward SIP (UDP 5060) and RTP ( UDP 10,000-20,000) at a minimum. Also, you’ll need to make sure these ports are open on your firewall. This helps direct SIP traffic to your phone system, similarly as if you had a web or mail server.

Of course, there are security concerns when exposing SIP directly to the internet, and the same concerns apply for a hosted system, but when dealing with a cloud solution, you are generally given a 1:1 (one to one) NAT from your external IP address to the VoIP system’s internal IP. A 1:1 NAT ensures all traffic is sent to the system without any additional rules. Some cloud services place an external IP address directly on your server, increasing simplicity.

If you’re reading this, and are becoming increasingly concerned, you’re not wrong. If you’re in the technology field, you’ve probably been taught that exposing any server directly to the internet is wrong, bad, horrible, and stupid. Generally speaking, that’s all correct, but luckily many cloud service providers will offer the ability to create access control lists to place in front of your server, like the one below from Microsoft Azure.

This gives you the ability to control access to specified ports, source, and destination IP addresses. Additionally, FreePBX has built in intrusion detection (Fail2Ban), and a responsive firewall, allowing you to further restrict access to ports and services. Is this hack proof? No, of course not. Nothing is hack proof, but I have run my personal FreePBX, exposed directly to the internet, with zero successful attacks. No, that’s not a challenge, and you can’t have my IP address. You can, however, have some of the would-be hacker’s IP’s (see below).

If you’d like to learn about the firewall that FreePBX has put together, go here. I’m not suggesting, that this is just as good as placing an on-prem VoIP system behind a hardware firewall, but the results so far are that it works very well. Using a cloud solution will always be at your own risk, so do plenty of testing and take whatever measures needed to secure your system (disclaimer).

SETTING UP (REMOTE) EXTENSIONS:

One of my favorite feature of a cloud based system is that all extensions are essentially remote extensions. This means you can place a phone anywhere in the world, in theory, with an internet connection, and place calls as if you were sitting in the office, or at home. There are some variables to this configuration, mainly restrictions on whatever network your phone is connected to, but generally speaking, it’s a useful and user-friendly solution. Now, for the rest of the article, I will assume that you know how to create an extension on FreePBX and have basic familiarity.

The first thing I typically do when deploying a new VoIP system is to define all of the network information for SIP. This is important for both cloud systems, and on-prem, Specifically, you need to tell FreePBX what networks are local, and which are not. To accomplish this, proceed to Settings > Asterisk SIP Settings, and define your external address, and local networks.

Next, if you have your firewall turned on and you should make sure SIP is accessible. You’ll notice in the below image that the “Other” zone is selected, meaning I have defined specific networks that are allowed under Zones> Networks. To allow all SIP traffic, you can select “External,” but you would be better off enabling the Responsive Firewall, which rate limits all SIP registration attempts and will ban a host if a registration fails a handful of times.

Also, something to pay attention to: Make sure you use the right port number. By default, PJSIP is enabled, and in use in FreePBX on port 5060 UDP. I will generally turn off PJSIP and re-assign 5060 USP to Chan SIIP. This can be adjusted under Settings > SIP Settings > Chen SIP Settings, and PJSIP Settings.

Once the ports are re-assigned, you MUST reboot your system, or in the command line, run ‘fwconsole restart.’ I also like to tell FreePBX to use only Chan SIP. To do that, go to Settings > Advanced Settings > SIP Channel Driver = Chan SIP. PJSIP is perfectly funcitonal, but for now, I recommend you stick with CHAN SIP as PJSIP is still underdevelopment.

We should also assign the global device NAT setting to “Yes”. This will be the option used wheneber you create a new extension. Without making this the global default, you will have to make this change manually in each extension, when you’ll likely forget to do, and your remote extension will not register. This setting lets FreePBX know that it can expect the IP phone or endpoint to be external and likely behind a NAT firewall. To change this global setting, go to Settings > Advanced Settings > Device Settings > SIP NAT = Yes.

Lastly, make sure your extensions are using SIP, if you haven’t turned off PJSIP. You can convert extensions from one channel driver to the other within an extension’s settings.

At this point, you should be able to register your remote extensions to your cloud based FreePBX system. If you are running into trouble, run through these troubleshooting steps:

Check the firewall – Allowing SIP? Are you being blocked?
Check Fail2Ban (Admin > System Admin > Intrusion Detection) Are you banned?
Check that your networks are properly defined in SIP Settings
Verify you are registering to the proper port
Make sure the extension is using the proper protocol
Debug the registration attempt in the command line – Authentication problem?

I hope this article sheds some light on the topic of cloud based VoIP systems, and how to set up extensions for that system. I also hope this saves you a few hours in troubleshooting if you are not well versed in FreePBX configuration. As a friendly reminder, before you make any changes to your production system, take a backup, or snapshot, and always test your changes.

5 Must-Have Features of Your Remote Monitoring Solution

As a technology solution provider (TSP), chances are you have a desire to take your business to the next level. The TSPs that are successful in this endeavor have a key ingredient in common: they are armed with the right tools for growth. The most critical tool for success in this business is a powerful remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution.

So the question is, what should you be looking for when you purchase an RMM tool, and why are those features important to your business?

The right RMM tool impacts your business success with five key benefits. With a powerful and feature-rich RMM solution in place, you can:

Automate any IT process or task
Work on multiple machines at once
Solve issues without interrupting clients, especially with the help of IT Support Naperville and other reputed agencies as them.
Integrate smoothly into a professional services automation (PSA) tool
Manage everything from one control center
To better understand why these features are so influential, let’s talk a little more about each of them.

1. Automate Any IT Process or Task

Imagine being able to determine a potential incident before your client feels the pain, and fix it in advance to avoid that negative business impact. Being able to automate any IT process gives you the proactive service model you need to keep your clients happy for the long haul.

2. Work on Multiple Machines at Once

To solve complex issues, an TSP must be able to work on all the machines that make up a system. If you are attempting to navigate this maze via a series of webpages, it is hard to keep up with progress and makes it easy to miss a critical item during the diagnosis. Having the ability to work on multiple machines at once is paramount to developing your business model and maximizing your returns.

3. Solve Issues Without Interrupting Clients

One of the biggest challenges that MSPs face is fixing issues without impacting their clients’ ability to work. With the wrong tools in place, the solution can be nearly as disruptive as the issue it’s meant to fix. The right tool must allow a technician to connect behind the scenes, troubleshoot and remediate the problem without impacting the client’s ability to work.

4. Integrate Smoothly into a PSA Tool

Two-way integration between your RMM and PSA solutions eliminates bottlenecks and allows data to flow smoothly between the tools. The goal of integration is to enable you to respond more quickly to client needs as well as capture and store historical information that leads to easier root cause analysis.

A solid integration will also increase sales by turning data into actionable items that result in quotes and add-on solutions. The key areas to examine when looking at how a PSA and RMM integrate are:

Managing tickets and tasks
Capturing billable time
Assigning incidents based on device and technician
Scheduling and automating tasks
Identifying and managing sales opportunities
Managing and reporting on client configuration information
A solid integration into a PSA will create an end-to-end unified solution to help your more effectively run your IT business.

5. Manage Everything from One Control Center

The control center for your RMM solution should be the cockpit for your service delivery. Having the ability to manage aspects that are directly related to service delivery such as backup and antivirus from the same control center keeps your technicians working within a familiar environment and speeds service delivery. Also, it cuts down on associated training costs by limiting their activities to the things that matter on a day-to-day basis.

Success means equipping your business with the right features and functionality to save your technicians time while increasing your revenue and profit margins. Selecting an RMM solution that solves for these five influential features is the key to getting started down the path to success. What are you waiting for?

This article was provided by our service partner : Labtech.

Select the Right Managed Print Service

We are moving toward the world of digitization as all businesses heavily rely on digitizing data. However, this change has not affected our mentalities and even today all the important, as well as routine, business activities and information is in hard copy. Not only that, but the use of print has been a difficult habit to change. A recent survey found an average 14% of global company revenue is being wasted on document related activities, owing to inefficient printing practices. In order to eliminate such expenses, it is important to adopt a Managed Print Service.

What is MPS and how it can be beneficial?

“Managed print services (MPS)” is a service offered by the external provider to manage and optimize document output and meet the printing needs of the entire firm. It also takes care of all the devices associated with the need for printing like printers, copiers, fax machines and multifunction devices.

MPS can not only reduce print related expenses, but it also helps to gain predictability about the expenses and gain better visibility. However, in order to avail the optimum benefits it is important to select the right MPS provider that can help the company to reduce the repair and maintenance costs. Below there are 5 tips that will help you to select the best MPS provider:

1. Should be able to provide multi-vendor support

Generally a company is expected to have all the same printing related equipment, but there can be exceptions. Hence, it is important to select an MPS provider that can provide services for all the type of equipment and should have the necessary expertise for required services and repairs. They should be able to provide necessary IT expertise for a wide variety of equipment.

2. Provide good customer experience

The MPS provider should be dedicated to improving the efficiency of print infrastructure, keeping in pace with the changing needs of the office. They should focus on improving the performance of the customers and enhance employee productivity. As per the survey done by IT advisory company Quocirca, it was found that 30% of the organizations viewed printing as a critical component for their business. Hence, it is important that the provider should be able to make printing a hassle free process and boost the company’s productivity.

3. Meet the demand for mobile printing

With the changes in the modus operandi of the businesses there is an increase in the demand of mobile printing. The businesses are functioning in a non-traditional environment and it has lead to an increase in the need for mobile printing. The MPS provider should be able to offer the apps or extensions that can fulfill the needs of mobile printing. They should be able to provide smart managed print services that can optimize and streamline the processes as well as workflow.

4. Should focus on enhancing the productivity

The MPS provider should not only focus on providing the print solutions, but should also be able to manage it more effectively and efficiently. They should be able to analyze the information regarding the printer usage and make necessary changes or recommendations in order to increase the fleet efficiency. It should be able to provide the required services as per the changing needs of the business. They should be able to streamline the workflow and provide cost effective solutions.

5. Maintain flexibility and consistency

The MPS provider should be ready to evolve and change as per the changing needs of the business and help them to face the challenges. Some companies may want to opt for a single vendor, while others might opt for multiple vendors. The MPS provider should be flexible enough to provide the solutions as per the needs of the company. Moreover, there has to be a consistency in standards of delivering the services across several locations over a span of time.

Summary:

The advantages of adopting MPS are way beyond reducing printing and paper usage. It can help your firm to streamline the process and workflows by managing fewer devices, fewer pages and lowered costs. It also helps you to enhance the knowledge of worker productivity and manage the increasing information and data.

What can be considered ‘warranty management’ for a managed IT service?

In the plethora of IT offerings companies are faced with, products and services have become extremely competitive not only with regards to price, but also in offering their assurance that what they offer is of good quality, will last in time and can deliver on its promise. As this has become the norm, no business would dare buy hardware or software that came without a written warranty. But how can organisations have some sort of guarantee of quality and efficiency when what they want to buy is not a product but a service?

Best practice is designed to understand the utility and warranty of any investment and it is important the distinction between the two is understood. The utility of an investment is the recognition of whether it is ‘fit for purpose’; the warranty goes beyond that to recognise whether your fit-for-purpose product is actually fit for use.
Firstly, it is important to understand which aspects are central in defining what can be identified as ‘warranty’ for a managed service. A good track record is of course imperative for the Service Provider, but this does not necessarily mean a very large number of clients of all types and sizes. Larger and widely-known Service Providers are not automatically the best choice for an organisation – can they understand your particular business, give you what you need and deliver the most cost-efficient service? You will find that a provider which is specialised or has relevant experience in dealing with organisations that are very similar to yours in type, size and needs might be the best choice for you. So this is what you should look at as a guarantee: a provider that has successfully carried out projects for clients that are similar to your organisation.

At the same time, it is important that the provider does not offer you an out-of-the-box solution for ‘all organisations like yours’. You might be similar in your structure and needs to other organisations, but this does not mean that you do not have some important differences. For example, NHS clinics all have similar needs and structure, but are very different in the way they deal with them – most clinics will use customised software and have different types of end users. The same is true for financial firms, from banks to private investment or currency exchange firms, where efficient and tailored IT is a vital element for their success. In fact, every sector is vastly different, so in a selection exercise, be sure to understand the Service Providers you are talking to can offer positive evidence that they have supplied similar solutions. Further to that, Service Providers that service a wider range of sectors will typically have a greater advantage in providing bespoke or ‘tailored’ solutions for your organisation.

These aspects are crucial in your choice of Service Providers, but what can guarantee the quality of the actual service itself? This mainly lies in the Service Level Agreement (SLA), which outlines agreed levels of performance monitored through certain metrics such as First-Time-Fix rate, calls answered within a set time, Abandonment rates, etc. These targets need to be consistently met, and if they are not, the Provider will be in breach of the SLA, which can have a financial impact. Consistently missing targets might mean the Provider losing the client and, in the long run, their reputation as well. With these metrics in place, it is in the provider’s own interest to perform at their best and not incur in fines or contract termination.

The choice of SLAs can make the difference between real and perceived efficiency and inefficiency. It is good practice to spend some time deciding, together with the Provider, what metrics to adopt (some will be more relevant than others) and where to set targets. Metrics have to be very detailed – setting a typical ‘70 % First Time Fix rate’ on its own is not enough. Ask yourselves: what counts as FTF? It normally refers to simple and common issues dealt with by Service Desk staff; but should printer cartridge replacement be considered a FTF even if it’s done by desk-side engineers? If some end users insist in a desk visit will it not be included in the FTF rate? This allows to have a clearer picture of how efficient of inefficient the service is and to understand if a managed service solution is right for your organisation or should be somehow modified to improve performance.

These metrics need to be tangible and agreed before they are incorporated into a live service.

In conclusion, we could say that a ‘warranty’ for a managed service should cover both the Service Provider and the service offered. It is a guarantee of quality if the Service Provider has the right track record for your company and the appropriate SLAs are in place, as well as fines and penalties for breach of the agreement. Only by carefully choosing the Service Provider which will manage your IT service it is possible to achieve efficient IT which is able to support and enable business success whilst bringing cost savings and general efficiencies to working practices.

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This piece has been published on ITSM Portal.

6 Steps to Client Onboarding Success

Client onboarding is the first time new clients get to see how you operate. It’s when first impressions are formed; impressions that could have a lasting impact. And if you don’t deliver on promises that were made during the sales process, what impression do you think they’ll be left with?

To make sure your client relationship starts off on the right foot (sorry lefties), you just need to follow a few simple steps.

1. Have a Plan

I’m always surprised to learn just how many people fail to use a project plan. I can’t stress this enough; a templated project plan is key to transforming your client onboarding process from mass chaos to a seamless, automated process. Outline every step that has to take place from the date the contract is signed to service go-live.

2. Use Time-Saving Automation

Using an IT automation platform, such as ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech), can cut hours off of the manual engineering tasks many of us still do today. Let’s look at some of the places you can shave a few hours from the client onboarding process.

3. Optimize and Secure Endpoints

Automate detects more than 40 different antivirus (AV) vendors, so let it handle the AV rip and replace process. As part of the security rollout, you’ll also want to deploy a second opinion scanner, such as HitmanPro, to automatically scan for and remediate any security issues your AV software might miss. Follow that up by deploying desktop optimization software, such as CCleaner, to get those systems running smoothly without a technician ever having to touch a single desktop.

4. Software Deployment

You’ll need to make sure common applications, such as Adobe and Java, are installed and updated. You can automate this task. Using some simple logic, the Automate script engine can easily search for missing or outdated software and then install or update accordingly. No more combing through reports or visiting each desktop to find out what’s there and what’s not.

5. Policy Deployment

Missing a critical error at any stage of the game can be detrimental; missing it during onboarding is simply unacceptable. Automate intuitively detects a machine’s role, determines which policies should be applied and automatically applies the right ones. Never again get that awkward phone call from your new client asking why their email isn’t working, and you didn’t know about it because someone forgot to apply a monitor template.

6. Educate Your Sales Team

After your project plan is in place and your automated processes are built, it’s time to educate your sales team. Let them see how the onboarding process works and how long it really takes, so they can set realistic expectations from the start.