When time-consuming tasks related to managing backups start to drain an MSP’s time, there are two ways to respond: accept the status quo or seek a solution to take control.
For Olivier Martin, Strategic Partnerships Manager at ited, that solution is Backup Radar.
“Now that I have Backup Radar,” he said, “I can’t imagine a world without it.”
As a Technology Service Provider (TSP) and IT Consultant for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) based in Montreal, Quebec, ited found Backup Radar while looking for operational improvements for the company.
ited leverages its team of over two hundred employees to deliver one-stop-shop service for its clients, from project management to deployment and network security.
Ited was motivated in part to adopt a backup monitoring platform because they didn’t only want to sell products but sell solutions. The manual processes took too much time and effort and led to failed backups not sending any alerts.
Martin said he has seen cases where a backup error has led to lost data because it was unreported by the system. When the client needed their data, it wasn’t there.
“With Backup Radar we were able to fill the gap or fix it before something bad happened,” he said.
“It’s like a silent hero working at night. It’s helped a lot to prevent many, many catastrophic situations.”
With so many clients, one of the obstacles Martin saw at ited was the effort required to have a global view of all the backups they manage. Backups are complicated, he said, because of the multiple software solutions used to back up the data, and so interpreting and monitoring that information can be challenging.
Backups are the most important and foundational part of IT services, but managing all of the alerts from the various backup solutions in use has become a mess.
“It created a lot of noise in our NOC service board,” Martin said. “Because it was creating a lot of noise, we were losing a lot of time to manage all of these alerts day after day.”
In the past, backup alerts were set up through an SMTP server, but due to misconfigurations or other errors, there would either be too many emails or notifications would stop sending entirely.
This created a stressful situation where staff didn’t know if no alert meant that nothing was wrong or if error messages weren’t being sent at all.
That’s where Backup Radar comes in.
“So with Backup Radar, we were able to intercept and catch up all these misconfigurations. It’s helped a lot,” Martin said. “We’re now able to be more proactive about backup misconfigurations, backup standards, and of course backup alerts.”
The Network Operations Center (NOC) handles backup monitoring and the myriad of tasks related to network monitoring for servers and workstations. There’s a lot to juggle, day-to-day.
Martin said that Backup Radar has given back the NOC team time to immediately handle alerts and fix problems. Because of the time crunch with other work, it used to take two to five days to address an error or alert. But now, the monitoring is automated, so they have more accurate notifications and more time to fix problems.
“Now that we have more time, we are able to fine-tune and turn on more monitoring sensors to get more alerts. In the past, that was not possible because they were, most of the time, doing backups.”
Backups are also an important element of cyber security. As the industry matures, we are seeing massive adoption of cyber liability insurance. Businesses want to protect their data and assets and be covered in the event of a security breach.
Backups standardization and management are a core part of the cyber liability insurance application and qualification processes. So having an automated and accurate monitoring system that works quickly is a massive benefit for organizations looking to get insured.
Martin said that insurance companies often ask about backup availability, whether the applicant performs recovery and restoration simulations, and monitoring processes. Backup Radar has been able to be proactive about managing backups instead of reacting to problems, which has helped its work with clients getting insured.
This is important because the criteria for insurance qualifications are always getting more intense.
As Martin said, “each year I see new questions, new criteria. It’s normal because there are too many cyber incidents and (insurance companies) pay too much money for this. So they want to be sure that the companies are well prepared to restart or restore and go back into production.”
Backup Radar has become integral to productivity of its NOC team and initiatives in becoming a solutions-oriented organization. Not only has it saved them time, produced better outcomes for backup service, and helped with insurance qualifications, but it has also saved them money.
By avoiding data loss, they build stronger relationships with clients. Clients are now more likely to renew long-term contracts with ited, keeping the businesses revenue flow consistent and sustainable.
It’s even helped the ited employees who now have more time in their day to accomplish meaningful work without having to spend several hours per week manually monitoring backups. Now ited can be a hero to their clients and employees, all while achieving their business goals.
Want to learn more about how Backup Radar can help your MSP? Some of the benefits include:
Discover what benefits Backup Radar can bring to your MSP. Check out our 5-minute demo to see Backup Radar in action.
