How MSPs provide their services
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@eddiejennings said in How MSPs provide their services:
@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
@eddiejennings said in How MSPs provide their services:
If this company were to hire a provider to improve / manage the IT infrastructure going forward. What kind of tools would the provider use for managing the workstations and servers (applying updates, installing software, etc.)?
Sky is the limit. MSPs tend to rely on RMM. ITSP tend to not and normally work with your tools.
MSP you change everything to work under them. ITSP implies nothing of the sort.
That makes sense. With the ITSP normally working with your tools, am I right in thinking that implies that the ISTP is designed to augment whatever IT staff you might have, rather than replace it?
ITSP is a larger umbrella term, that MSP is a member of. So ITSP might do what you say here, or might be like an MSP. It could do almost anything. ITSP is a large category of companies that provide IT. MSP is just one well known, popular sub-category of that that is more formally designed.
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@dashrender said in How MSPs provide their services:
Today options like Salt, Ansible and others can be used to make the PCs as near stateless as possible. You can get reports and push commands to the PCs with these.
Screenconnect and other technologies can be used for remote access to assist at the GUI level if that is needed.
This is heavily where we are focussing. Salt via SodiumSuite for control, and ScreenConnect for remote access.
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@wirestyle22 said in How MSPs provide their services:
I personally do not like putting all of my eggs in one basket, but my company does. A lot of people on ML use vary levels of what the RMM is capable of.
It's IT, there are no eggs.
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@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
@wirestyle22 said in How MSPs provide their services:
I personally do not like putting all of my eggs in one basket, but my company does. A lot of people on ML use vary levels of what the RMM is capable of.
It's IT, there are no eggs.
When you have solarwinds there are
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Comodo has a free RMM option that isn't terrible. I'm just not a fan of the other options on the market as they usually include many features I won't use/need. For my smaller clients, they hardly ever have a domain controller and for most of them, I'll recommend options like JumpCloud for authentication and set PCs to auto-update Windows/MS Office. That doesn't take care of the other installed software but for those instances where I need to manage the entire update cycle, I've used Comodo One RMM. For clients with onsite servers, I'll VPN in on a scheduled basis for scheduled maintenance/updates.
We're clearly not a large MSP so this has worked for us.
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@nashbrydges said in How MSPs provide their services:
Comodo has a free RMM option that isn't terrible.
Oh man, we tried that and our phones just wouldn't stop ringing after that. They hounded us and hounded us to make sure we never used them again.
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@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
@nashbrydges said in How MSPs provide their services:
Comodo has a free RMM option that isn't terrible.
Oh man, we tried that and our phones just wouldn't stop ringing after that. They hounded us and hounded us to make sure we never used them again.
Damn! Knock on wood, so far things are working for me.
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@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
@nashbrydges said in How MSPs provide their services:
Comodo has a free RMM option that isn't terrible.
Oh man, we tried that and our phones just wouldn't stop ringing after that. They hounded us and hounded us to make sure we never used them again.
I'm not the only one this happened to?
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@coliver said in How MSPs provide their services:
@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
@nashbrydges said in How MSPs provide their services:
Comodo has a free RMM option that isn't terrible.
Oh man, we tried that and our phones just wouldn't stop ringing after that. They hounded us and hounded us to make sure we never used them again.
I'm not the only one this happened to?
We've heard it from a few people. Only so many have tried them. We told them to stop but they were determined that we never do business with them again. We obliged.
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As a MSP gets larger, to be really efficient, you need a RMM and a PSA to be really efficient. As far as the RMM I'll add that the paid tools like Connectwise Automate (LabTech) and Kaseya go way beyond the stuff you can string together for free. Sure there is probably a developer out there that could string stuff together, but at what cost?
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The PSA (Professional Services Automation) automates all the business side that needs to happen so you get paid. You put your sales templates in, then convert them to agreements and as you work tickets, it keeps track of how stuff gets billed.
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When I started as a MSP I used some of the free tools for some tasks and paid for ScreenConnect and a few other things. Then I kind of hit a wall where the free tools wouldn't let me do things that I needed for some of my more demanding clients. I decided to go all in on the MSP side and start moving away from break fix, so I needed more automation to be more efficient. So far, I'm glad I did.
To answer your question about tools, for a new client, I spent 15 minutes putting an agent on his network. Then later that day I emailed him a report that showed all the machines that were missing patches, running AV or not, running questionable software, etc. Graphs, colorful pictures, etc right out of the box. 20 minutes of my time. Have you ever tried running a report out of Spiceworks?
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In your hypothetical example, my tools allow me to install patches on the hyper v server on Saturday night, and patch and reboot the VMs Monday night. I can also create different groups for the workstations and patch them different nights instead of the way WSUS and group policies handle it.
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@mike-davis said in How MSPs provide their services:
As a MSP gets larger, to be really efficient, you need a RMM and a PSA to be really efficient. As far as the RMM I'll add that the paid tools like Connectwise Automate (LabTech) and Kaseya go way beyond the stuff you can string together for free. Sure there is probably a developer out there that could string stuff together, but at what cost?
Having just been forced to use ConnectWise, we found it to be horrible. The tech works, but the overall integration and system was so bad that there is no way we could work if we had to use that all of the time. The theory is great, but the execution failed.
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@mike-davis said in How MSPs provide their services:
When I started as a MSP I used some of the free tools for some tasks and paid for ScreenConnect and a few other things. Then I kind of hit a wall where the free tools wouldn't let me do things that I needed for some of my more demanding clients. I decided to go all in on the MSP side and start moving away from break fix, so I needed more automation to be more efficient. So far, I'm glad I did.
To answer your question about tools, for a new client, I spent 15 minutes putting an agent on his network. Then later that day I emailed him a report that showed all the machines that were missing patches, running AV or not, running questionable software, etc. Graphs, colorful pictures, etc right out of the box. 20 minutes of my time. Have you ever tried running a report out of Spiceworks?
Yeah, having the right tooling is essential. And it needs to he hosted external to the clients on an MSP model. Needing to install something like SW at every client site is untenable for an MSP. But SW is not meant for that, either. It's meant for in house use only (that's not opinion, that's what the developers said when they designed it - no accommodations for MSPs.)
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@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
Having just been forced to use ConnectWise, we found it to be horrible. The tech works, but the overall integration and system was so bad that there is no way we could work if we had to use that all of the time. The theory is great, but the execution failed.
Which piece of ConnectWise? ConnectWise has a bunch of "formerly known as" products under their umbrella. LabTech, ScreenConnect, and Manage to name a few.
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We use ScreenConnect for remote management. I like it a lot more than Kaseya and some others I've used. There is a baseline to what you should do to support a client, but really every engineer can do what they feel is best for the client.
I'll use other tools as needed, such as a VPN or whatever. But my workstation has few tools. Each environment has its own setup, so I have a password manager/remote tools (Remote Desktop Manager... Does SSH, HTTP/S, ADSM, etc. All pre-configured connections). I treat every network as if I don't have a laptop on site, and I have to rapidly support them. They have their own service accounts for services, which alert me externally with things expiring. That makes it easy for any other company to waltz in and take over, if the client is not happy with us.
What I despise is company's who hold a client hostage, and some how lock them in. I give over network diagrams and passwords in a nice, readable format. Alerts to my external account are all changed, based on which services are currently documented. So that means my documentation is really well kept for internal as well; any of our engineers can take over very easily if I'm sick or unreachable. Consequently, I've also never lost a client. If I did, they'd be happy with the transition though.
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@mike-davis said in How MSPs provide their services:
@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
Having just been forced to use ConnectWise, we found it to be horrible. The tech works, but the overall integration and system was so bad that there is no way we could work if we had to use that all of the time. The theory is great, but the execution failed.
Which piece of ConnectWise? ConnectWise has a bunch of "formerly known as" products under their umbrella. LabTech, ScreenConnect, and Manage to name a few.
Their helpdesk specifically was unusable. And that's a pretty important piece, the part we need to work to know to use the rest of it.
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@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
@mike-davis said in How MSPs provide their services:
@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
Having just been forced to use ConnectWise, we found it to be horrible. The tech works, but the overall integration and system was so bad that there is no way we could work if we had to use that all of the time. The theory is great, but the execution failed.
Which piece of ConnectWise? ConnectWise has a bunch of "formerly known as" products under their umbrella. LabTech, ScreenConnect, and Manage to name a few.
Their helpdesk specifically was unusable. And that's a pretty important piece, the part we need to work to know to use the rest of it.
To be fair the MSP we were pitching in with might not have done a good job setting anything up so it could be because they didn't know what they were doing with it.
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@minion-queen said in How MSPs provide their services:
@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
@mike-davis said in How MSPs provide their services:
@scottalanmiller said in How MSPs provide their services:
Having just been forced to use ConnectWise, we found it to be horrible. The tech works, but the overall integration and system was so bad that there is no way we could work if we had to use that all of the time. The theory is great, but the execution failed.
Which piece of ConnectWise? ConnectWise has a bunch of "formerly known as" products under their umbrella. LabTech, ScreenConnect, and Manage to name a few.
Their helpdesk specifically was unusable. And that's a pretty important piece, the part we need to work to know to use the rest of it.
they didn't know what they were doing with it.
If they screw up alot, follow them around to their clients. Easy pickins.
