Every industry has felt the drastic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Naturally, businesses, schools, and daycares were forced to shut down to minimize the spread. In turn, many MSPs experienced greater demands than ever before with an uptick of support requests as businesses rushed to transition to remote work. For many MSPs, this meant following an ad-hoc approach to simply get all of their clients back to being operational from home.
Going forward, remote work is here to stay. Most businesses have decided to continue embracing remote work – at least to some degree – because it allows for social distancing while keeping costs low, productivity high, and overall, more efficiency throughout the workforce. So what’s next for MSPs who followed an ad-hoc approach to helping their clients transition to remote work?
Creating Proper Remote Work Strategies
The answer is simple: it’s time to create proper remote work strategies. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, MSPs had no clue how long their clients would be working remotely. This means that in many instances, businesses were transitioned to accomplish the bare minimum:
- Access to email and some applications
- A functional desktop and/or laptop and a smartphone
- A minimal amount of security measures, such as anti-virus software and spam filtering
But now, an ad-hoc approach to remote work simply won’t be enough. There is far too much at risk when employees are working from home without the proper tools, security measures, and processes to keep them safe and productive for the long-haul.
What Should a Remote Work Strategy Include?
The managed services industry has been, in many ways, a savior for businesses looking to continue operations. Some MSPs were able to go above and beyond the bare minimum – helping their clients leverage remote access solutions, such as VPNs, cloud-based productivity suites, and virtualized desktops, in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, even in these circumstances, there was minimal planning for the long-haul.
It’s important to switch remote workers from an ad-hoc approach to an organized, cohesive approach that incorporates proper tools, security measures, and processes. There are many opportunities for MSPs as the initial panic subsides. It’s time to offer secure work from home solutions, including business-grade laptops, routers, and high-speed internet packages. It’s important to focus on:
- Advanced cybersecurity measures for remote workers, including VPNs and business-grade anti-virus software and firewalls.
- Secure cloud-based solutions, including hosted desktops, infrastructure-as-a-service, hosted phones, and cloud backup solutions.
MSPs will need a cloud partner that offers an entire suite of cloud solutions for organizations that will continue to work remotely, despite lockdowns being lifted. Cloud Services For MSPs offers our cloud partner program that gives you access to our entire suite of cloud solutions, as well as configuration support, white labeling capabilities, wholesale pricing, and more.
Want to continue this conversation with us? Let’s discuss how your MSP can take advantage of the latest in cloud technology to help better serve your clients.
Click here to get started or call us at (866) 883-8836.