Archive for the Cloud technology articles Category

Businesses want cloud migrations to be easy, simple, and straightforward. In reality, cloud migrations take a lot more work and planning to fully benefit your customers. An area that deserves significant attention is redundancy. Moving data or business processes to the cloud does not automatically equal redundancy, so it is important to educate businesses on how it protects their processes. Cloud Computing and Redundancy More and more businesses are seeing the value of migrating core services to the cloud. This value is real: cloud computing serves as a viable solution for a wide range of business processes and IT infrastructure. Migrating to the cloud can save money, increase uptime and reliability, and enable massive scalability to a degree that businesses just a few years ago couldn’t have dreamed of. Cloud computing naturally provides value in terms of redundancy.

It can be challenging to grow your MSP business with the current hiring challenges that are happening worldwide. The current tight labor market has made it more difficult than ever to find the right technical team members to grow your MSP business. If your team is already stretched thin, this can limit your ability to add new clients and slow your growth. Today, more than ever, people are continuing to work from home. This has caused clients to increase their demand for technology to help their employees achieve their daily tasks. If you are trying to increase your recurring revenue and clients are placing more demand on your technicians, it is difficult to grow with current hiring challenges and a spread thin staff. Expanding your business may feel impossible, but there are a number of ways to remedy the situation.

It’s no secret that businesses enjoy all sorts of benefits from cloud migration. However, despite the many advantages to migrating storage, processes, and services to the cloud, many businesses offer certain cloud objections when the conversation comes up. Are you interested in pushing your customers towards cloud migration but are encountering resistance? Expense: “Cloud Is More Expensive than On-Premises!” When businesses price out the process of moving to the cloud, sometimes it’s true that a cloud server is more expensive than an on-premises equivalent. This is a big hurdle to overcome in a world that’s extremely cost-driven, but it can be done. The key here is to focus on the comprehensive value and ROI of the move, not just the top-line cost difference. With a cloud migration, you gain a degree of reliability, flexibility, and scalability that on-premises just can’t match.

The only way to escape the cloud nowadays is to be stranded on a deserted island, which makes it puzzling why some MSPs are still skeptical of their ability to sell the cloud and explain the cloud to others. In 2022, a business owner proclaiming that they will “never sell cloud” is signing a death sentence for their business. Is your MSP missing the point of the cloud? Cloud is not going away. That’s a fact. However, if you think it can be ignored, think again. Are you fooling yourself about the cloud like other MSPs that I have talked to? Are you the MSP that says, “It isn’t in my client’s best interest, so I ignore it”? Even if your client isn’t ultimately interested in moving to the cloud, you need to educate them; if you aren’t educating them, your competitors are.

Cloud: It’s not going away. In fact, cloud has completely redefined the IT industry and managed services. MSPs today need to embrace the cloud in order to meet the demands of clients having more and more remote workers, and the first step to this is by adopting a cloud-first strategy. What are the advantages and disadvantages to becoming a cloud-first MSP? What is a cloud-first MSP? Given the choice between relying on a local, on-premises resource or one based in the cloud, a cloud-first MSP chooses the latter. This doesn’t mean that MSPs must move every part of their business to the cloud, but it does mean taking a “cloud-first” approach when making decisions for client technology. By making the cloud the default basis of their operations, MSPs gain the following advantages: Scalability: they can increase or decrease resources on demand.

Cybercrime is constantly evolving. With many businesses transitioning to the cloud in recent years, the cloud has become a significant target for cybercriminals worldwide. As an MSP, you need to make sure that you are providing up to date cloud servers with robust security options to prevent unauthorized access to your customer’s information. What are some of the most common ways to help your customers cloud servers stay secure? One common way to strengthen the security of your customer’s cloud server is by using a firewall. Firewalls act like a wall which can help to prevent hackers from attacking. Think of them as a gatekeeper. How do they help? Monitor Traffic. Firewalls monitor traffic coming in and leaving your cloud server. A firewall will inspect this traffic for threats and if found, will block them. Protect against malware.

Whether you are using your remote monitoring and management (RMM) software or more enhanced tools such as Scalepad to track client asset lifecycles, you should be discussing aging infrastructure and warranties with your customers. Failing to do so is putting them at risk and costing you additional revenue. You may already be conducting quarterly technology business reviews, sending monthly reports, or scheduling check-in conversations, but you should also be planning at least an annual full technology business review to discuss inventory and forecast future needs. The best time to do this is when companies are planning their budgets for the upcoming year. Delivering the Tech Plan During the tech review, you should pull an inventory of all of their assets and provide a technology plan for replacing or retiring inventory that’s aging out, reaching the end of life, or needs upgrading to meet future business needs.

Let’s take a minute to talk about QuickBooks. As one of the most popular accounting programs available on the market, the capabilities and flexibility offered by QuickBooks makes it a common choice for many businesses. What can hosting the desktop version of QuickBooks do to improve your client’s workflow and make their job easier? The Benefits of Cloud-Hosted QuickBooks There are two distinct options when it comes to QuickBooks in the cloud: using a hosted version of QuickBooks online or a hosted version of desktop QuickBooks. Many MSPs have customers that want their desktop versions of QuickBooks to be in the cloud, but they believe the only option is to move their customers to QuickBooks online. Luckily, cloud hosting the desktop version of QuickBooks is very possible, and using this version provides several distinct benefits to your customers.

If there’s one thing that’s true of most IT professionals, it’s that you got into IT, not sales. Selling isn’t a natural skill for many MSP owners, because they’re often much more comfortable working on systems, software and services than they are with asking for orders or creating an outstanding pitch deck for the next presentation. However, trying to keep your MSP going without having a solid sales process in line can make the business much more difficult to grow successfully. Here are some secrets to help you improve your sales process and ensure that your MSP can see successful growth for many years to come. Talk to Your Customers You may think that you need to tell your customers about your certifications, credentials and specifications, but that’s not why your customer is seeking you out.

The increase in cyber-attacks in 2021 is unprecedented and unrelenting. Coming on top of a 69% increase in escalation in 2020 and reported losses of $4.1 billion due to breaches, cloud security should be at the top of every MSP’s priority list. While the public thinks about hackers targeting specific companies, cybercriminals today are also attacking MSPs directly by exploiting gaps in security software. This was underscored by the recent attack on MSPs – and their customers – through a vulnerability in Kaseya VSA, a cloud cybersecurity solution used by many MSPs. The Kaseya attack was similar to the so-called supply chain attack used to insert malicious code into software updates for SolarWinds customers in 2020 which exposed data across hospitals, universities, private companies, and government agencies.