I was hosting my regular monthly Business Office Hours a few weeks ago and the following question was posed by one of my partners: “Do you have any collateral or talking points I can use to help persuade my break/fix customers to move over to managed services?”

Sometimes we associate fast-growing networks with power and success, but being small doesn’t mean you can’t compete—you just need to be smarter at creating a sustainable competitive advantage. Here are 10 things you can do as a small managed service provider (MSP) to punch above your weight. A documented process is a consistent process. And once you document how a process is carried out, you can then look for ways it can be improved.

Enterprises have always had more money to spend on IT than small-and-medium businesses (SMBs). This has traditionally resulted in a disparity in the technology and services available to each. However, with the rise of cloud-based services and the increasing need for remote working, this gap is starting to close. While there are still some differences between enterprise IT management and SMB IT management, the two are becoming more similar.

As I said the first time I wrote about this topic, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” In this blog, we’re going to look at five more things in N-central that you might not know how to use—or you might not even know about them at all. If you haven’t read my first blog, check it out here.

In today’s increasingly complex IT and networking environments, automated patch management is a critical component to maintaining business operations and keeping organizations secure. Organizations are constantly under threat, with the average seeing 497 cyberattacks every week, and automated patching is one part of cybersecurity hygiene that helps reduce an organization’s attack surface.

In an increasingly digital business world, data backup has become vital for the protection of an organization’s interest. Businesses of all sizes can get hacked or breached, and indiscriminate ransomware attacks cause countless orgs to lose their valuable data to cyberthieves every year. Even disgruntled employees or other insider threats can steal or delete their valuable digital assets.

ManageEngine OpManager MSP is a reliable solution solely developed to help managed service providers with monitoring client networks and servers exhaustively. It has a wide range of out-of-the box features to help MSPs in their multi-client network monitoring journey. The ManageEngine team works hard to make products that cater to the needs of MSPs, which is why OpManager MSP undergoes regular improvements, because even the most feature-rich tools need tune-ups every now and then.

For the second year running, CRN readers have voted N-able as the Number 1 RMM software in the Annual Report Card (ARC) Awards. The ARC Awards are one of the most prestigious honors in the IT industry, highlighting vendors’ commitment to partner satisfaction and reinforcing their dedication to channel partners through nurturing and growing partner relationships.

How is your relationship with your key vendors? One area of business that many MSPs overlook in the growth of their business growth is the strength of a vendor partnership. Do you view the companies who supply you with software and services as partners in a long-term relationship, or are your relationships more transactional (one and done)?

Standard operating procedures—more commonly known as SOPs—are written, step-by-step instructions that describe how to perform a routine activity. While you can create an SOP for anything, an MSP SOP that outlines technical procedures is a well-known path to increasing efficiency in your business. Whether you’ve got existing MSP SOPs you’re interested in updating, or you’re looking for some basic steps to build brand-new SOPs around, you’ve come to the right place.

I speak to a lot of MSPs every day, and I’m always asked for advice on meeting new prospects. Finding new clients is one of the biggest challenges they all face. “Have you tried asking your existing clients for referrals?” is my stock answer. And for good reason—prospects referred to you by an existing client are four times more likely to buy than any other opportunities. Here are a few of my tips on how to generate client referrals from existing clients.

On a fairly regular basis, users will post to Reddit or Spiceworks or another IT forum to ask about the best support staff ratio of techs to users, and what other companies are finding sustainable. The question usually comes from an overworked tech who’s drowning in tickets and trying to understand what’s considered. The answers can get interesting. On Spiceworks, many people responded with details about the environments they support—and the range was notable.

Break out your buzzword bingo cards, it’s time to talk about SASE or Secure Access Service Edge. Pronounced “sassy,” SASE has become one of the hottest topics in networking and security over the last three years. The basic idea is great: all your security and network services are on one platform. The problem comes when you get into the specifics. When does a set of services go from “not SASE” to “SASE”?

In the first portion of the underutilized RMM features series, we discussed the use of Site Concentrators and Data Overdue Cross-Checks. This time we’re going to discuss Monitoring Templates. MSPs have shied away from Monitoring Templates in the past because of the effort needed to set them up. I think this is the wrong way to look at them; we need to be thinking long-term here.

Pew research reports that the percentage of adults who own smartphones is up to 85%. These mobile devices are also being used frequently for work. The addition of an increasing number of mobile devices within companies causes IT environments to be more complex, making it necessary to have a centralized management tool for these types of devices. Mobile device management (MDM) is software tool designed to allow IT to manage smartphones and tablets that are used within a business.

We’ve entered a time when hard drives are becoming less important than data speeds, syncing, and remote storage. More and more end-users are saving their files in the cloud for convenience, safety, and cost savings. That said, some people still have concerns about cloud computing -- namely around security. How safe are files that are stored hundreds or thousands of miles away, on some other organization’s hardware?

Computers double in power every couple of years, according to Moore’s Law. That’s good news for companies and their people—continually faster and smarter gear can power higher productivity. But there’s also a downside to Moore’s Law: devices go obsolete quickly. The average server lifespan is only two to four years. And network switches often last just three to five years before breakdowns become a common concern.

While it is fair to say that in recent years we’ve seen a shift to servers being deployed in the cloud through Microsoft Azure or AWS, I’m sure if you’re reading this today you still have a large percentage of physical servers under your management, including Hyper-V and ESXi hosts. N-central’s ESXi monitoring should automatically detect and monitor the hardware in these boxes, but what about the rest?

Outsourcing is a common business practice, and the IT industry is no exception. It shouldn’t be a surprise that companies are turning to IT outsourcing, considering the shortage of skilled talent. According to a CodinGame survey, 65% of the surveyed recruiters will hire at least 11 developers in the next year, while 22% are looking to employ more than 100.

We’re pleased to announced the launch of N-able Cloud User Hub, following the acquisition of Spinpanel in July of this year. N-able Cloud User Hub is a multi-tenant Microsoft 365 management and automation platform built for Microsoft Cloud Solution Providers and allows users to automate the management and security of all Microsoft tenants, users, and licenses.

Sustainable technology has become a hot topic in the tech world over the past few years. From the escalating environmental impact of heat and water-intensive activities like crypto mining and chip production to carbon taxes to sustainability becoming a pillar in the AWS Well-Architected Framework, there’s plenty of issues to talk about, but conversations become marked quieter when you shift to discussing solutions.

There’s no doubt that the typical modern enterprise generates large amounts of data that must be moved, analyzed, and safely stored. Because much of this data involves the privacy of users and customers, various laws and regulations have been created to drive strong protection practices. While these regulations vary a great deal from country to country, the underlying concept remains the same: keep data safe while making it available to authorized users when they need it.

The use of mobile devices within organizations is steadily increasing, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. Zippia reported that around 3 out of every 4 employees use their personal cell phones for work. Mobile devices in the workplace can provide many benefits, but can also bring more risks, which is why mobile device management is needed.

Over my time as a Sales Engineer and Partner Success Manager, I quickly learned that there are a few under-utilized features of N-sight RMM. While performing RMM dashboard audits, three of these features routinely came up in conversation with our partners. They include the Site Concentrator, Data Overdue Cross-Check, and Monitoring Templates. In this blog series, we will briefly cover uses in your day-to-day work and implementation of the features.

Please Note: The following article details the experience one of our partners had using MarketBuilder. As such, individual results may vary. When asked about N-able MarketBuilder, George Ioannides’ response is effusive: “I love it.” Although George, who owns Cleveland, Ohio-based MSP, Fidelity Systems, hasn’t yet been able to use MarketBuilder to its full potential, he’s an avid user of its social media and marketing capabilities.

Data disasters are practically inevitable, but a planned out backup strategy can combat their damaging effects. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the U.S. government is a major organization that recommends sticking to a 3-2-1 backup strategy. Follow the 3-2-1 backup rule to ensure that your data is kept safe.

As a managed service provider, your success depends largely on the satisfaction of your customers. If they’re happy, they’ll stay with you and recommend you to others. But if they’re not, they’ll take their business elsewhere. Sometimes, some customers are never satisfied no matter how hard you try. Instead, they’re always finding something to complain about, which can be frustrating.

Dropbox is one of the oldest names around when it comes to cloud file storage, and the company has built a reputation as a reliable platform for file sharing and collaboration. Recently, Dropbox has been taking a few sidesteps from its roots and promising secure data backup features along with its staple file sync and share. Dropbox is not alone here. Most cloud storage solutions seem to be trying their hands at backup -- if not in practice, at least in terminology.

The idea of a VLAN, or Virtual Local Area Network, is simple enough, right? It’s hard to imagine any work in a modern networking/IT space without having encountered, set up, or managed a VLAN. Well if that’s all you needed to know about VLANs, we’d be done here, but there’s a bit more to it. To cover our bases: In most modern networks the primary purpose of the LAN is to provide connectivity to a wider network, most notably the internet.

When prospects do a Google search on your MSP, where do they find you? Is your MSP landing on Page 1, or is it being relegated to Page 2 or even worse? According to quicksprout.com, the top result on Google has a 33% chance of getting clicked, and they have found that 75% of people won’t scroll beyond the first page. (I know I never do—if what I’m looking for can’t be found on Page 1, why bother even seeing what is on Page 2?)

In today's business and IT environment, marked by constant change and transformation, if you’re a managed service provider (MSP), you are probably struggling to keep up. You’re faced with the need to modernize your operations, but the speed at which you can do so is constrained by years of accumulated complexity and chaos.

Any mature industry, at some point, will be regulated by local, state, or federal laws. Restaurants did not always have to have food safety inspections. Gas stations did not always have to have pumps calibrated and certified. Vehicles have not always required seat belts. As a society, we are well served by these regulations that help keep us safe and protect consumer interests.

At some point in your IT career, you’re going to be involved in a project. Whether you’re planning it or executing it, a project needs to be guided to ensure it achieves its goal. It’s easy to start, but without IT project management, deadlines can slip, costs can skyrocket, and things might never move forward. We’re here to help! We’ve enlisted the help of two of our Auvik experts that specialize in IT project management to pass along some of their hard-won tips and tricks.

As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know”. So, in this blog, I’m going to look at five things in N-central that you might not know exactly how they work—or you might not know about them at all.

The debate of cloud vs data center looms large for businesses when determining how to best store data. In past years, the trend has leaned more toward the growth of remote solutions using the cloud. Yet, data centers are still relevant. Gartner states that spending on data center infrastructure is expected to grow 6% by the end of 2021. Cloud storage and data centers both possess unique features that allow you to achieve your organization’s data goals.

To find out, we pulled ratings from G2 and Capterra for 90+ products across 12 different software categories. The result is this guide full of comparison charts, highlighting how individual products stack up against one another in terms of overall satisfaction, usability, and quality of support. The hope is these charts provide MSPs with a helpful starting point for researching their many (and growing) options.