What we saw
It was three eventful days wisely spent on Labtech Automation Nation conference at Tampa, FL. We had the pleasure to meet hundreds of MSPs gathering to learn more on what’s upcoming with Labtech and what other vendors integrating with Labtech had to offer. Vembu StoreGrid certainly had an upper hand amongst other vendors since we were one of the first vendor to complete the integration into Labtech through their SDK . MSPs / Partners who stopped by our booth were very excited about it. This integration allows MSPs to mass deploy StoreGrid client agents and ability to configure and monitor StoreGrid backups right within Labtech console. Adding to that is our complete integration with ConnectWise PSA that allows MSPs to automate their billing and ticketing.
What we learnt
We learnt not to talk about backup / restore anymore during the conference as the MSPs were already overloaded with that information. They must have heard ‘backup story’ like thousand times already. Backup / Restore for that matter, should just work. But what was more important was that how ‘Backup and Disaster Recovery service’ offering can help MSPs to sell more. On further interaction with MSPs during various lunch and breakfast meetings, we witnessed that there is a longing need to offer quality IT services and at the same time make this MSP business a profitable service offering. The more automated and hands off the service offering works, the more time for MSPs to focus and sell more. Taking ‘Backup Service’ in general for example, MSPs have mentioned that ‘Monitoring and Managing the Backups’ as the biggest pain point in offering backup service to customers.
There are hundreds of point backup solutions available. But in order for MSPs to be successful in offering a backup service, a backup application / service specifically designed for MSPs is what is needed and those solutions are very few in the market today. Below are the items that MSPs needs from a backup solution (apart from it taking backups and restores)
1) Multitenant solutions that allows MSPs to manage multiple customers from a central portal and offer a cloud based backup service
2) Affordable pricing to provide enough room for making profit margins
3) Monthly Recurring Licensing model that simulates MSPs existing MRR model with their clients
4) Complete integration into PSA and RMM platforms for automating Billing, Monitoring and Management
5) Brandable, Reliable and Redundant
StoreGrid Backup and Disaster Recovery service perfectly fits into ‘ALL’ of the above mentioned points and makes it a unique offering for MSPs. Our deep integration into Labtech, ConnectWise and other PSA / RMM tools is a witness to that.
Overall we had a nice time and looking forward to meet our Partners at Automation Nation 2014. On a final note, special thanks for ConnectWise for throwing a great party and they certainly know how to do it right.
I just love this, we are using LabTech to manage our customers and this is just what we have been waiting for. Please keep up the progress on this, we are looking forward to start using this possibility as soon as it’s in there! Petter Sehlin, Digital Information AB, Sweden
We’re glad to see you excited Petter and we’re equally excited! You’ll be using StoreGrid through LabTech in no time at all! We’ll let you know as soon as the integration is live! Thanks!