Air IT is a client-focused and award-winning Managed Service Provider, ranked in the top three MSPs across the United Kingdom. When the founder of the company first saw Backup Radar at an industry event four years ago, he was so impressed with the capabilities and potential impact that Backup Radar could make at his company.
The discovery was shared with Tim Wiser, Air IT’s RMM Automation Manager, who could validate this optimistic first impression. Wiser immediately saw the value in centralizing their backup monitoring operations with Backup Radar.
Now with over nine offices throughout the UK, the Air IT team has seen a year of rapid growth, having acquired eight new MSP companies since September 2020. They have almost doubled their use of Backup Radar in under six months, to the Enterprise 1000 plan.
Air IT needed a solution to onboard and centralize backup monitoring across a wide range of backup products. With the MSP’s rapid growth, it was clear that using Backup Radar would not only allow Air IT to quickly onboard their new clients, but would also create a structure around centralizing backup monitoring.
“Once we point [our clients] to Backup Radar they say ‘Wow!’ and we agree, saying ‘that’s why we use it!’ It’s one of those very easy discussions.” Wiser explained.
For Air IT, one of the first orders of business when onboarding a new company is to get their backup environment integrated into Backup Radar for monitoring. Before Backup Radar, this proved to be a time-consuming undertaking. Air IT relied on manually writing automation to detect the unique assortment of backup products each new acquisition had in their stack.
“Rather than spending time writing automation to detect an assortment of smaller backup products, it’s no longer necessary. That’s time saved!” Wiser said.
The previous method was difficult to predict, he said. It could have been five minutes, or several days of research and testing and development per backup product.
“Now I just tell our new colleagues and clients to point at Backup Radar. It’s so easy, and that’s saved quite a lot of time.”
If it can email backup results, it’s highly likely that Backup Radar can support it. While there are already 300 backup products currently being monitored by Backup Radar, with the right information, it’s a simple request to tech support to get new backup applications into the platform. The Backup Radar dashboard can also be customized to best fit workflows or differences between clients, offering MSPs like Air IT more efficient ways to manage backups.
No matter the wide assortment of backup applications being used by a new client, Air IT is able to quickly and efficiently onboard all variations of backup environments, from small to large, into Backup Radar. Now they can ensure comprehensive monitoring is in place from the start.
As a major partner with Datto and StorageCraft, Air IT would love to standardize across all their clients. However in a dynamic and growing environment, it’s simply not realistic to move clients to the same platform so quickly. While they have always appreciated the benefits, through their particularly rapid growth this year, Air IT was reminded of the integral part Backup Radar plays when onboarding new clients and centralizing their backup monitoring operations.
Automated monitoring allows Air IT to keep track of their clients’ backup environments for risks, vulnerabilities, or other trends in order to take action before new issues create problems for their clients.
Rest assured, knowing that your backups are under a watchful eye
Over the past four years of having Backup Radar integrated into their operations, Air IT has reaped the benefits of being able to consolidate monitoring while eliminating manual efforts to automate their system.
“The biggest benefit for me, it’s the peace of mind,” said Wiser. “You can throw any backup product at Backup Radar and it will recognize it and know what to do. It’s reliable and efficient.”
The future is bright for Air IT in their continued growth in helping clients achieve success and transformation through IT, communications, cyber security and business intelligence. This automation and centralization of backup monitoring has been a game-changer, and Tim’s final thought is clear: “[Backup Radar] does the job really well. I’m extremely happy with it.”
