“Instead of renting a client 50GB of storage, we now simply tell him “We’ll back up all your files!” -- Chip Reaves, President of CT-Anderson
CT-Anderson specializes in providing comprehensive IT services to small-sized businesses that have fewer than 25 employees. The company prides itself on doing anything necessary to ensure that its clients don’t need to worry about their computers, networks, or backups. Client IT should “just work”, sums up their work ethic.
Business Challenge
Over the last few years, CT-Anderson had diversified its IT service portfolio into providing backup services. Offering great service in the Anderson area, the company had built up a client list comprising about 40 businesses and 50 individuals.
Originally CT-Anderson decided to go with JungleDisk from Rackspace due to the prior experience of Chip Reaves, President of CT-Anderson, with the solution. As the numbers of machines covered under the service plan increased, costs associated with using JungleDisk began to mount rapidly. JungleDisk became difficult to handle and configuration management was too complex. ”JungleDisk was confusing because there were different types of agents to install. The process to go about configuring an agent to do a certain thing was very complicated,” Chip Reaves said.
With clients getting more accustomed to working over the Internet, there was an increasing demand for a backup tool that could give clients a web-access to their data. CT-Anderson needed a reliable white-labeled backup system that supported strong encryption. They wanted to use AES 256 bit encryption so that they could reassure their clients that their data was secure.
“I knew that it was going to be a concern for our customers. Although they don’t know the technical terms, they ask “Is my data going to be safe in the cloud?” And I know that if it’s got this sort of encryption, it will be,” Chip Reaves, President of CT-Anderson, said.
At the same time, the company needed to lower backup costs to the point where they could tell a client “Go ahead, we’ll back up all your files” rather than restricting clients to a fixed amount of storage space.
Besides the above, CT-Anderson was looking for a solution that was so simple that clients could handle most routine tasks themselves. The solution also had to support remote management where technicians could solve problems from their console rather than going to the client’s premises and interrupting their work. Detailed reporting was an important criterion that the service provider looked at. CT-Anderson wanted immediate email reports in case a backup did not perform as required.
Solution
After looking at dozens of prospective solutions, CT-Anderson zeroed in on MSP360 Managed Backup. The math made sense and the features that the company wanted were all there. CT-Anderson tested out the features and decided to switch to the MSP360 solution.
It now takes the IT service provider a fraction of the time to set up the backup systems for a new client as compared to its previous solutions. Technicians no longer need a remote login to clients’ machines to check out any issues with their backups. They work from their MSP360 console without interrupting the client. They handle any issues via the console and email the client confirming that their problems are resolved.
MSP360 has comprehensive alerts and reporting features that ensure that every aspect of the solution is being monitored. Reports are emailed to CT-Anderson everyday and these reports provide a convenient single source of information about the status of all clients. This simplifies management enormously and frees staff to focus on other tasks.
Using MSP360 Managed Backup allows the company to select a backup storage provider of their choice. This resulted in bringing down costs of storage from previously high values of 10 and 30 cents per GB to as low as 3 cents or less per GB. This huge reduction in storage costs made it possible for CT-Anderson to change its approach to selling backup solutions. Instead of offering clients specified gigabytes of storage, the company is now in the happy position of telling their clients “We’ll back up all your files”.
CT-Anderson’s experience with MSP360 Managed Backup couldn’t have been better. The technicians are also pleased with the MSP360 support team. “Support has been very good, quick and easy. Everything worked very well for us,” Chip Reaves commented.
“We’ve looked at a dozen online backup solutions and the best backup solution for anybody in this managed service model that we found in terms of letting you build your customers monthly, having a good management console and good alerts and having a good price that keeps you with a good margin, is MSP360 Managed Backup,” Chip Reaves, President of CT-Anderson, said.
Conclusion
Previous backup solutions that CT-Anderson used were cumbersome, expensive and required considerable technical support at the client end. Clients’ expectations were increasing and if CT-Anderson were to stay competitive, it needed to upgrade to a white-labeled, simple, low-cost cloud backup solution that would also require lesser technical support. A new solution had to support strong encryption, provide comprehensive reporting and alerts and be easy to handle.
After a long and hard look at more than a dozen solutions, CT-Anderson zeroed in on MSP360 Managed Backup. The benefits were almost immediate. The time taken to set up the system for a new client reduced, technical support needs were minimized and overall costs came down by a third.
All of this has allowed CT-Anderson to change the quality of managed service that it offers its clients. Instead of renting them 50GB of storage, the IT service provider now simply tells them “We’ll backup all your files.”
