One of the questions I regularly get asked is what common automation tools do I use or what do I advise people to use for various use cases? I thought I’d put this information into a blog for easy reference for our partners and others. Note: None of the recommendations below are commercial endorsements, but they are suggestions based on what I’ve used personally in the past. You are welcome to use whatever you want since most of the things below have other options, free or paid.

So, you’re thinking about replacing your current backup solution. Well, before you start requesting price quotes and comparing feature matrixes you should understand that a change can have both short-term and long-term impacts. The extent of the impact depends on several factors, including why your clients need backup, how those backups are being performed, whether they have ever experienced data loss, and how long they need to retain backup data.

I was asked to write a pledge to help promote the importance of Safer Internet Day, which is taking place February 8. If you are not familiar with Safer Internet Day, it is a day dedicated to highlighting practical ways in which you can be involved in creating and maintaining a better online world. You can read more about it here. I took on this task and actually came up with two pledges: a personal and business one.

While MSPs have been making significant investments in security and offering services, it is a challenge to keep up with the frequency and evolving sophistication of today’s cybersecurity threats. Defense in Depth (DiD) is the foundation on which most MSPs have built a layered security approach for dealing with them.

If you haven’t started planning your marketing activities for 2022, it should be your number one priority this month. But what should you be doing and where do you start? To kick off 2022, I thought a post on the top marketing trends MSPs should watch for in 2022 would be a great springboard to get those creative juices flowing.

2021 was another challenging year globally. Despite this, the N-able™ Take Control team continued to deliver top-notch releases to increase product functionalities and improve customer satisfaction. In this blog, we’ll take a brief look at the key client-facing features we’ve delivered in the past 12 months.

The managed services provider (MSP) industry has been rapidly consolidating for the past several years as private equity (PE) firms buy up small IT firms and cobble them together into larger platforms. But that process is evolving quickly for two main reasons: there aren’t enough sellers of quality assets and PE firms have shortened how long they hold their investments. That means they need to hunt for bigger game—and with a rifle, not a shotgun—before they cash out and exit.

My mantra with regards to automation has always been, “If you do it more than twice, automate it.” And I stick by that, with a few exceptions. There are some things you should never trust to an automated script.