1

I’m currently in the process of trying to redefine my business/service offerings for my current client list and after that expand my business. I’ve found that many people/support groups and changing to the MSP model and it is working for them by charging a per device monthly monitoring fee (another discussion is already started on this subject), however, I want to take a more holistic approach to service offerings and package them in an incredibly affordable solution that small and medium size businesses can really say no to. So this is what I am thinking.

Typical MSP model: Pay per device and you get the standard reports, a helpdesk you can send tickets to and over the phone help when you need it. Any new devices, implementation an planning, onsite visits, support agreements, etc, you will still have to maintain…

eclecTech MSP model: Combine the use of different software platforms (open source, microsoft, freeware, shareware, etc…) to bring the small business very affordable solutions they need but would otherwise not have or use because it is not affordable. So I would like to take a lot of free tools, like password expiration reminders, content filtering software, self-service password and unlock functions, SSL-VPN access, spam filtering, clean up and optimization software, health checks, network mapping, etc, and put those on a box that I bring into the office (all free and affordable stuff) and charge it in my monthly service fee. So essentially you will get more “BIG BUSINESS/ENTERPRISE” level support and an IT infractrustucure at a low monthly cost instead of paying per device.

The fee would include all projects, pretty much everything. So, I would love to work with a couple of people to develop the model and put things together if anyone is interested, that would be great! If your not interested in combining efforts but have some ideas or a laundry list of directions about which software and how to go about it, that would be great as well!

Thanks, and I’ll post some things later, once I finish up a list of products that I think many small business’s could benefit from but don’t have the budget for them, this is where we come in.

8 Spice ups
2

Count me in.
I have some ideas on how to deliver the monitoring and management that Kaseya does, but using a modular method and free products.

The MSP model is realy all about hving strict list of what you will deliver for the end customer. You and I know they just want their systems to work on Monday morning. But the MSP model smudges and blurs that definition with splitting things up into monitored objects/services and deliverables.

The basic SaaS MSP model is faulty in that things like:
ISP failure
Customer plugs in his iPod and the server runs out of space.
Delapidated kit (hardware) fails.
Low client investment in data protection (SCSI disks, RAID, BBU, Backups, UPS etc) end up as your problem.

Personally I’d rather the client spend their good money on solid hardware with capacity and good data protection, and I then don’t need to do much at all.
The bigest thing I mostly get to do is applying the MS Hotfixes…

3

I am thinking of the same idea. Havent tryed it but this is my checklist:

Security - Install Untangle with Open Source package at customers location

Management and monitoring - Install Vmware Server on the Untangle server and run Windows Xp with Spiceworks on it.

Untangle`s VPN configuration is very easy and intuitive and you can log on any time even for RDP if some client needs assistance.

Cheers,

Dime

1 Spice up
4

Thanks Dime,

You have the right idea, it is something along those lines for me, and yep Untangle is definitely on the list because they pretty much gathered many of the things and is similar to the concept I’m thinking, however, to get the remote and some other things it’s a monthly fee! Not sure how much or I believe you can purchase a device as well, like an appliance that would stop you from having to find an old machine, etc…

I’m not certain what products Untangle uses for their stuff however, that’s what I would really like to know, like do they use ASSP and some of the other stuff that is top notch and free? I forget the web content filtering stuff, but because there is support and for the price, free for the most part, I was thinking about it as well.

5

I believe that Untangle uses only open source components like: ClamAV, Spamassassin, Snort and they include some proprietary code to get it all working as a package running with java controll.

IMO the problem with Spiceworks is the agentless concept which makes the deployment limiting. You might check Purgos, it a very nice package similar to Spiceworks, but both rely on wmi and with so many workstation av + firewalls its very hard to get all the necesarry data.

I was looking at Paragent.com as a model for client deployment, they issued it under open source but i had no luck trying to get it working.

It has alerting, helpdesk, remote desktop control and some other nice stuff.

Its both hard and interesing to create your MSP model, but since we are not completly into the MSP business i believe that we can spend some time searching and testing.

Cheers,

Dime

6

Dime,

I’m sorta looking at trying to do the same thing as Untangle, possibly with different products than they use, which is why I was wondering what the actual OSS they use.

Yep, it is an interesting model and I think will be much more effective than using Kaseya and throwing that sales pitch to small/medium business. You are first selling them on the idea of what they need for their network, then you sell them on the idea of what is being offered with your service versus others and costing it out. I currently pay for lots of things inside of my contract, just wrapped in, like online backup, Postini perimeter AV and spam, and it allows you to charge premium pricing and less headache for offices.

I took a look at Paragent and it seems to be similar to SpiceWorks however it has a feature request that I was looking for in SpiceWorks and never got a response, which is having a consolidated helpdesk for all clients. I hope SpiceWorks can address that issue, otherwise I will probably have to seek alternatives as I grow but stay small as a business.

In terms of Purgos, I did look at them and believe they have the same limitation as Spiceworks in terms on having to install the software locally at each site! However I’m looking into http://www.helpstream.biz/ which is a really cool checklist, help service that seems to be really cool! It is another feature before I found this one, that I asked SpiceWorks about and still didn’t get a response.

7

Hi Guys,

If you have a chance to choose the platform the customer is using, You might think about SBS2003 and then using something like the box with additional software on it to fill in the gaps that SBS leaves. It has pretty good reporting, backup built-in, email server, etc. I use a product called Linktivity for remote support. It is web based and I can help customers from anywhere I can get to the internet. I also use Helpstream for case management and will look at using it for customer access also. That way they can submit tickets and monitor them. The one thing Helpdesk lacks which I would like is being able to email the case to someone. What I mean is I want to see the ticket and have a button to send the ticket or tickets to a customer. This would be useful for Accts Payable types who didn’t get a copy of the call ticket and want to know what they are paying for.

Updates can be done with WSUS. Most of this could be put on a box and set in a customers office. With Spiceworks, you also have a helpdesk built-in.

Just some thoughts.

8

Purgos version 3.0 is about to be released as beta. With Version 3.0 agent and agentless monitoring is supported. With server communication and agent communication only a single tcp port needs to be opened through the firewall.

For more information see

http://www.softulz.net/Purgos30Beta.htm

9

Had a good look at Health Monitor [Not the MS SBS one] ( www.health-monitor.com )

It’s ok… but…
Pros:

  • works from central server, so can service multiple clients
  • monitors Hotfix compliance
  • monitors the usual stuff

Cons:

  • Can’t easily add multiple states for aletrs/monitors
    eg disk space; Warn=50%, Alert=30%, Critical=10%
  • not secure. client to server HTTP connection does not like using HTTPS or securing the config folder. In a multi-client scenario one would have to have this insecure web site open to all.
    OK I know I could use IPSec to lock down what client IP source can connect, but that will kill off supporting a roaming laptop.
    IPSec with authentication would work but would have to be manually setup on each client. No hastle for me, but others may flounder at this point.
  • costs $110 per client… phew…
10

Has anyone come up with a list of planned services to offer outside of monitoring logs and backups?

QOS, Offsite Backups, Subscriptions to software, consulting for large projects and much more could be offered.

We pretty much act as the IT department for our customers on a block of time basis which ust gets re-billed at a preset usage. Problem is there is no way to guarantee the hours per month with this model.

Any Ideas?

11

Funny, my clients didn’t want to do the block of time hours initially. They wanted to do hourly billing. However, when other companies came in and suggested an MSP model (Kaseya for example), they felt it a better deal! So I upped the ante and secured the contract and for a 24 and 36 month timeframes.

So, basically now they can budget the IT dollars for services, never have to worry about the expense of how much it is going to cost in consultant hours. They just have to say they want something and we do it! If they want a upgrade this, change that, whatever, it’s all included in the monthly fee! It seems to be working out well because there is guaranteed income for 24 months or 36 months on the contract!

12

That’s the type of contract (all-in MSP style) that people seem to be wanting in the UK, however that model is open to abuse by the client demanding too much project work and too much hand-holding for untrained and …(er can’t think of better word…) incompetent users.
Just like the ‘unlimited’ ADSL internet access is now all stopping, in favour of ‘limited’ (xGB/month). It proved unworkable, as people took them at their word and downloaded gigs and gigs…

Here, I can only see that realy working as ‘all-in’ for the day-to-day service delivery. e-mail to desktop, internet access (save for external ISP issues), file-server access, backups… All the rest will be new ‘projects’ at discount rates because of existing contract.

Bear in mind that here in the UK, I have seen business managers ‘fall off their chair’ in shock, when told they should budget approximately [per month] £400 ($800) for supporting approx 20 users and about another £250 ($500) for looking after the LAN, Server, Firewall and dealing with their ISP. They THINK that’s expensive…
Bassed on a time-and-materials (Break/fix) support, if the server is reasonable quality and setup correctly, the switches/lan is ok, the desktop are setup correctly, and the users don’t bugger about with stuff. Then YES it will be that or less… Most often much less.
Now this doesn’t include pro-active monitoring, just checking to the SBS daily report, and responding to any alerts that SBS Health Monitor issues…
But basicly, if the client puts his hand in his pocket and buys decent kit, pays for it to be setup PROPERLY, then it doesn’t normally have to be touched. Prodded occasionally, but that’s all…

Oh and to cap that, if you have to do some work on a workstation to fix something… Perhaps work out why one particular web site doesn’t work… they are too busy during the day to release the machine to you… You’ve got to do it remoteley in the evening… At no extra (inflated/additional) cost !!!..

Personally I’m P’d off with the UK small business (sub 30-users) market at the moment…

Look at this BT IT support advert:

£10 per month per PC for full 24x7 phone and remote support
http://www.btbroadbandoffice.com/internetapplications/itsmremote

(from) £200 per month for full site pro-active monitoring and remote support…
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/btbusinessProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=19807

When competing against this. “well they don’t have a clear and full understanding of your systems and will take longer or propose inapropriate fixes” just doesn’t wash, as the ‘sales pitch’ specificly markets that they aim to have a clear understanding of your business and IT requirements and bring huge technical resource to bear on your issues.

I almost feel like giving up.

Dave

13

Well that appears to be a numbers game for BT I suppose, however, I think they will find themselves failing in certain areas that will require a huge shift in pricing structure and support services. While I agree there is opportunity to be taken advantage of, that’s where a good establish client relationship comes in.

BT may be cheap, but it always goes back to, you get what you pay for, and people are certainly no ignorant of that fact. For those who want cheap them certainly they are not your targeted customers, I don’t think any business that is profitable or is well established wants to take a chance on technology and if they are a busines using cable as an ISP, I wouldn’t work for them anyway, that’s a tell-tell sign righ there, they are not equipped to need your services finacially nor technically. I personally don’t sell the idea of desktop support because people are now comfortable doing that in their own homes and defnitely a small business owner will do the same. It the other scary stuff that makes a difference and for the cost I see BT charging just for notifications is crazy, and if someone has to come onsite they can help but that is additional.

I think you will find many dissatified consumers within a short period of time with them and what they have done is opened up the market to have the dependency on a tech support company, but one that is reputable, reliable, reactive and resassuring and responding to them that they can answer their questions and very quickly isolate and solve therir problems instead of spending 2 hours of precious time on the phone and getting nothing resolved except, we need to have someone come into the office.

I personally get frustrated now with vendor support who can’t answer simple networking questions they should know the answers to, BT is a $6/hour training ground for new tech people and why would anyone, especially a small business leave something that precious and with that much investment in the hands of a trained retail worker.

Forward thinking and CIO level service is one of many things that sits a veteran IT shop apart from these and in the long run, dollar savings will occur or at least even out!

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I’ve stared a complementary thread

Competing with the MSP model - What should be included?

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You are correct… About the cable bit, however NO small business (that I’ve ever come across here) use anything else.

Here in the UK, a Cable/Adsl line ranges from 2Mb/s to (up to) 24Mb/s and is asymetrical in nature (eg 2mb down and 256k up)
Cost for these range from £6/pcm to about £35/pcm for home/office/smallbusiness connections.
More ‘business oriented’ internet services cost from £25/pcm to £400/pcm and there’s a big gap in service levels and line availability and capacity.
Basicly a ‘good’ £6 service can outstrip a £200 service and is commonly the case.
Business owners know this and draw direct comparisons from their own home internet service and always question the cost justification.

As far as cable goes, well technically the cable service in the uk leaves the Adsl service standing. Virgins cable infrastructure is fibre-optic almost to the door, and then coax for the last 200 metres or so. Latency (on cable) is very low and contention is much lower than ADSL. You still can get shafted on both, if you happen to be allongside some heavy users.
I question some of the delivery of cable services on Virgin. If you get a business service with the ‘fixed’ ip. Yes it stays static (doesn’t change) but the rest of the world treat it as dynamic and your mail commonly hits the spam bin or your server connection gets 550’d (refused). This is an ISP issue to resolve and they can’t be bothered. (not enough money in it).

Given the choice, here, I put 2 ISP’s in.
The cable service and a small ‘full business grade’ mail and backup Adsl.
In front of these go a fairly cheap Vigor load-ballancing router/firewall.
Total cost using 2 ISP’s over seperate delivery networks is in the order of £50 to £80 per month.

Fixed internet lines… Do you folks in the US call these T1 lines?
What are these like?
What are the cost/speed ratios?
Here a dedicated line could be SDSL or similarly copper deliverred (rarely fibre).
These cost from £450/pcm for a dedicated (1:1) 1Mb line to over £20,000 per year for a 20Mb service.
Small to medium businesses do not, and will not pay that much. Basicly the business owner does not see the benifit… he can spend £1,200 a year having two DSL/Cable feeds, invest £5,000 in new kit, take a divi of £3,800 and take his kids to Disney World and still be £10,000 up !!

I did sort out a ‘teer-1’ fible 40Mb connection for a betting firm once, and their anual cost was in the order of £1,000,000 with the diverse backup circuits etc…
That was a few years ago, and costs have been coming down dramatically.

Come on… Anyone here in the UK second my views, or think I’m talking out of mu ‘rear end’?
Comparison and peer-review welcome…

Dave

16

Dear David, i understand your frustration :frowning:

Small businesses want cheap “setup and forget” solutions. They are unwilling to invest in the basics that runs their business.

I am still having the same problem regarding the pricing strategy. I can’t see the point in having “all included” as a part of your price list unless you can measure the clients needs and habbits wich is near impossible.

My clients needs range from: “Working MS Excel 24/7/365, and nothing else” to “Having Exchange, AV, WinXP patched clean and working” and these comparisons are from clients with same number of clients. Now, how can i charge them the same. I wont, but ill invest time in educating the first client off all the aspects that needs to be covered. Furthermore ill take more money that expected from the first client from services like: Cleaning viruses, repairing Windows and similar stuff.

17

I think part of the problem most people are having is something that goes way back, specializing. I think you’ll find you can’t help and don’t want to help all SMB’s because they are just that SMB’s, just as you are! However, there are plent of SMB’s that are professional level and demanding and willing to pay for it. So when I say specialize, you should target and market area like law offices (not sole practitioners but 5 to 10 attorneys), medical offices (2-5 doctors) and other professional businesses where the demands on them are high, the income is high and so they demand great service.

You can’t and don’t want to service everyone if it just boils down to price for them, move on, I would rather have 10 MSP model, monthly paying customers that value my service, than 100 break-fix customers that will call me when they can’t fix something. Why? Because, in the end it is less stress, less work and more money.

That is part of the problem, the world is changing and IT has to change, before, many large companies were afraid of “outsourcing”, now they are ready for it, asking where do I sign. Kaseya and others, have paved the way, and of course their level of service is limited with those products, Level Platforms does a more wholistic approach, but no matter, allow of them fall short in terms of personality. I’ve turned down clients who were willing to pay, but because it was break-fix and a headache. The MSP model and the products mentioned above would not have seen the group it is seeing if these things didn’t work, the unfortunate thing is respondents so far to this list, has not bought into the MSP, so that is the first step, I’m past that, I know it works, I’m waist deep in it and now, what I’m looking for is expansion.

I WANT TO KNOW-- How do I compete with Kaseya and Level Platform subscribers to offer great benefits to clients without using their products and services? What products can I use (free and very cheap) and what services can I offer, that will seperate me from these guys. Competition is great, plus the Kaseya and other MSP models are already selling people on the idea, now what? What makes you different and require a higher price, what you offer, (20 years of experience in the field), who cares the younger generation is much smarter and more creative, sure but doctors and lawyers are conservative, see where I’m going with that! So, what I want to do is change the focus of this discussion to reflect – HOW WE COMPETE WITH THE SAAS company’s that is basically making money off of us and in turn our clients or enabling another company to market to our clients they have something better in terms of service and product.

18

All i can say is that it is very hard, because:

MSP vendors created one console for everything you need, you will need to monitor every application that you install through different console. That is time consuming in my opinion.

I wanted to break down on 2,3 things like:

GW Security: Untangle

Desktop management: If Purgos 3 permits agent based monitoring i can connect it with my database so i can have complete landscape of my supported customers divided in company groups.

Anti-virus: I am keen on F-Secure especially Protection Service for Businesses since it enables remote monitoring and reporting through F-Secure Online portal.

I hope this is more helpfull.

cheers,

dime

19

SBS with Health Monitor does a better job of monitoring server and conectivity at the client site.
This alerts by e-mail, Directly via mobile & sms.
Software to the desktops is deliverred via built-in ‘Intelimirror’ (AD deployment).
Hotfixing and patching is handled by WSUS.

If Purgos pans out on V3 and bringing the desktop support back to ‘mission control’ will plug the other gaps. I’ve had some good e-mails back and forth with the founder (Ryan Ackerman) and he seems keen to point this product in the right direction. The big question is how much would we be willing to pay and what for? My response was; Yes I would pay, but the pricing model must work as all these functions can be done for free at present, either with built-in tools or scriptlets.

Add to this a ‘management’ PC placed on-site with an extra NIC running ntop-xtra and a hub to monitor the internet feed.
The internet usage etc can then have stats etc produced.
I would not even attempt to monitor the LAN as most switches in use don’t have the facility to monitor ports.
What I possibly would consider is inserting a hub between the server and the lan and hooking a monitoring nic onto that. But that said, if ntop is stable and not a resource hog, I’d considder dropping that directly on the server.
In the mean time the management PC runs spiceworks as well, or purgos.

Open the RDP port on the firewall and edit the pc’s own firewall to restrict access to local lan and your ‘support’ ip…

single click on an RDP icon and you’re into the desktop and have visability of the network etc…

There has been some talk of Intrusion Detection systems. Hmm…
Bassed on the premise that the LAN is not 100% visable from any single point, what are the practicalities of putting something like this in?
What business benifit?
Do they actually work in practice?
What rate of ‘false alarms’ is one to expect?
How does one budget the ‘investigation’ work required to respond to alerts?
I get the feeling these are like burglar alarms. Everyone thinks they are a good idea and some insurance companies/compliance bodies require it, They go off for strange reasons - often at 2AM making you go in to investigate, and then someone bypasses the whole system sneaking in during the day (when it’s off for obvious reasons) and steals your laptops…

What about web content filtering… can we add that in.?
Does that generally have to be a ‘paid’ service.
What sort of systems is best?

  • Client-side restriction software?
  • network ‘man-in-the-middle’ pass-through?
    • Can this run on the ‘management’ PC?
      Thinking through my client base, being able to ‘trawl’ the internet is often a business need. Some are getting into the social networking sites from a business development person-to-person networking approach, most need ebay, most need access to webmail (hotmail, gmail), things like myspace are starting to be used, the full breadth of sport/recreation/news etc are needed at at least one place…
      The standard firewalls I use, include the ability to subscribe to content filtering and I always offer it, but get asked “Why do I need this?” I always pitch the ‘keeps you clear of the “dark side” on the internet’, we do the free trials, but I get so many calls with some needed site not working and even some business critical software no longer getting it’s daily updates, that the business owners ask for it’s removal, despite rapid resolutions of issues etc…

What I’d love to do…

  1. bring the Health Monitor console status view back to ‘mission control’
  2. Allow for ‘multi clients’ etc in the console views at mission control
  3. bring the purgos/SW console/lan view back to mission control.
  4. integrate at a sensible level HM and purgos/SW console views.
    -just what’s practical-
  5. mission control runs VNC server which all client systems call into, so I can remote the desktops direct through the nat firewall.
  6. control AD settings (add users, set groups, edit GPO’s) etc directly from mission control without having to log into the server. – NOT critical, only a ‘nice to have’.
  7. Scripting system of some sort that pushes out software from the sbs server to client PC’s independant of user logon or user permissions. This is needed to be able to deploy software and some settings that won’t push the MSI/intelimirror method.
  8. ability to ‘schedule’ batch jobs/tasks for single or multiple systems.
  9. common tool set to fit 90% of (windows) clients.

Where does Vista fit in amongst all this?
We can no longer purchase XP, so we are going to have to get to grips with this fairly soon.
Any toolset we assemble must be looking towards the new vista and office 2007 deployment methods.
How much user training do you see?
I can see the phone ringing LOTS with users asking “how do i do such-and-such?” and “why can’t I just do this-and-that?”

20

I think “tech talk” is important to a sale and having the Intrusion Prevention is just another software that may or may not do much, but it is available and used by big business and just something to say you have. I think it’s just another marketing piece.

As is most of the stuff. Many small business and mediumones in fact don’t need many things except for a few users and the benefit versus cost, generally isn’t worth it. However, they’ve been sold on it and someone, somewhere is looking to make the money.

In terms of content filtering, again that is depending on you business base, however, many small business do not like to see their staff spending hours on non-productive internet stuff, however, they have no idea such stuff can be blocked.

I don’t think it is a good idea to offer anything that requires a paid subscription personally, when there is so much OSS out there.

Well, that’s why the model works, initially all contracts are heavy work loads and they taper off. Have a training class with FAQ’s about Vista and Office 2007, this will kill a lot of questions right away!