New Tip: Tech Time Warp: The Origin of the Oregon Trail The real Oregon Trail began in Independence, Missouri, but for generations of American schoolchildren, the trail began in a Minneapolis classroom in 1971, when three student teachers combined their penchant for history with their knowledge of BASIC. Don Rawitsch had created a board game about the Oregon Trail on a sheet of butcher paper, and while his roommates Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger liked the game, they suggested taking it up a notch and programming it for the school’s new teletype machine. With only two weeks until Rawitsch’s lesson, Heinemann and Dillenberger worked late nights to program the game, which was a hit with students. They gathered around the teletype—which, for the younger readers, had no visuals, only words — to type in instructions for moving their wagons across 2,000 miles of treacherous trail. When the school year ended, Rawitsch deleted the code from the district’s mainframe, but he kept a printout. This came in handy when he began working for the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC). The Oregon Trail reaches the entire countryHe worked to improve the game at MECC, using statistics gleaned from historical accounts of life on the trail to determine just how often players would die of dysentery or have mishaps fording the river. From 1975 to 1983, the game OREGON was available to all MECC users. However, the shutdown of MECC’s mainframe wasn’t the end of the trail. In 1978, MECC had begun partnering with Apple to sell Apple IIs to school districts across the country. These Apple IIs needed content, and an MECC team led by R. Philip Bouchard developed the 1985 version of The Oregon Trail that remains a classic. For a dose of mid-1980s elementary school nostalgia, you can play the first graphic version of the game today on ClassicReload.com. Photo: Zack Frank / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/28/tech-time-warp-the-origin-of-the-oregon-trail-managed-services-tips/
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New Tip: Don’t believe that cold calling is harder during the summer In MSP sales, it’s well known that cold calling is much harder during the summer months, when vacations create scheduling conflicts everywhere. However, that should not stop your MSP from making this useful strategy as effective as it can be. While I personally take most of the summer off to spend with my children, my company still runs at full steam ahead. We do not stop calling in the summer for a very important reason. For every month you or your team isn’t calling, you’ll lose one full quarter of follow up activity. Meaning you’ll have no “He’ll be back on July 7, call him then” type activities to follow up on. You’ll also likely drop your scheduled to-dos when you fall out of your calling rhythm. “For every month your #MSP team isn’t utilizing #ColdCalling you’ll lose one full quarter of follow up activity.”- @coldcallcarrie
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If you have taken any of our cold calling courses, you will already know that our best practices around cold calling include developing your own personal process and commitment to consistent outbound calling. You identify a time that you will use for your “new outbound” activities, and you identify a separate time for your “follow up outbound” activities. Put yourself in the right place at the right timeDuring “cold calling time”, which is set in stone on your calendar and honored like a commitment to a valued client, you will conduct all of your new “cold” outbound activities. During your “follow up” time, you will send and reply to email requests, write thank you notes to people who have given you referrals, and make follow up calls to prospects you are already engaged with. This is how you establish consistency in cold calling process, and how you eventually win new business. So much of cold calling is being in the right place at the right time. The biggest component to successful outbound is identifying that right time. If you stop your outbound rhythm, I can guarantee you the next thing to go will be your follow up rhythm, which means you’ll miss important call backs. If your competitor is prospecting this summer, and you miss your committed follow up activity due to complacency or a false belief that nobody works during the summer, or because you just felt like ditching work early to drink a beer on the patio – your next quarter will suffer, and so will your year end. “If your #MSP does not utilize #ColdCalling due to complacency or a false belief that nobody does during the summer, your next quarter will suffer, and so will your year end.”- @coldcallcarrie
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If you have added prospecting to your outbound strategy, you should have created a forecast and sales goal along with it. Let’s say 100 conversations leads to one meeting, and it takes 500 calls to have 100 conversations, and three meetings equals one new MRR deal. Can you afford to skip ANY of your outbound activity and still hit your sales goal for the quarter, or for the year? Take advantage of the opportunityWhile your competitors are golfing, relaxing or just plain ignoring cold calling as “dead” or a “waste of time,” you will be keeping your commitments to your prospects, checking in and staying top-of-mind, and identifying when the best time to reach decision makers will be. You’ll be gathering new data on every call. You don’t need to talk to a decision maker to learn how many computers they have, how they receive IT support, who they work with now, and when their contract may be up for renewal. You can speak to anyone about these things, and begin developing relationships with champions (the controller or office manager) and influencers (receptionists, support team members, sale reps). Remember, not all CEOs spend all summer golfing or surfing with their kids. If you haven’t already started a cold calling initiative, and you are a business owner or leader considering it, this will be the one time I will tell you to wait until fall – but only if you live in a seasonal area (meaning, if the weather where you live is consistently temperate you can begin cold calling whenever you want). One or two hours of outbound a day during the summer with no clean data and no follow up activities scheduled won’t be the best use of your time. If you’re going to hire a new cold caller, summer is a great time to get that person in, trained to your corporate culture, educated on all of your offerings, and have them begin sorting out your new list. Get that list cleaned up and functional before the fall, so they can hit the ground running and start prospecting successfully with no wasted dials in September. As always, we would love to help you prospect better, get more appointments, and close more deals. If the idea of doing it yourself doesn’t appeal, we’re here to support you! We’ll teach you how to prospect, we’ll teach your team how to prospect, we can create your entire prospecting process for you, or we can just take the whole thing off your plate so you can dedicate yourself to running your business, focusing on innovation and growth, or just go surfing with your kids in Cabo this summer (like myself). See you in the fall! Happy Selling! Photo: Berkomaster / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/28/dont-believe-that-cold-calling-is-harder-during-the-summer-managed-services-tips/ New Tip: Open source community flexes edge computing muscle The open source community signaled its intention to dominate edge computing during a KubeCon + CloudNative + Open Source Summit China conference this week in Shanghai. Arpit Joshipura, general manager for networking, automation, edge, and IoT at the Linux Foundation, said that, for all intents and purposes, open source platforms such as Kubernetes have already won the battle. For example, Huawei Technologies demonstrated at the conference how it is leveraging the open source Kubernetes to extend the reach of its cloud services to the edge of the network. The HUAWEI CLOUD is built on an Intelligent EdgeFabric (IEF) that enables Huawei to deliver services to multiple platforms, which includes a Huawei KubeEdge offering based on Kubernetes that is optimized for edge computing applications that have access to limited memory. That instance of KubeEdge not only connects to HUAWEI CLOUD; it can also run what are known as Kubernetes pods in an offline environment. Joshipura told conference attendees that approach to edge computing will be copied by most service providers because the cloud is now essentially now moving to the edge. To facilitate that transition, the Linux Foundation has formed LF Edge, an arm of the Linux Foundation that is building a set of frameworks and validated reference architectures for build edge solutions, for everything from Internet of Things (IoT) environments to 5G wireless networking services based on a Akraino Edge Stack platform that has Kubernetes at its core. The impact of LF EdgeThere are already more than 60 vendors that are members of LF Edge, including AT&T, Dell EMC, General Electric, IBM, Intel, and Samsung. LF Edge has already created a set of reference architectures for implementing Akraino Edge Stack and will soon create blueprints for implementing that platform with specific vertical industry segments. Edge computing in all its forms is the next trillion-dollar IT industry. Everyone from open source communities like LF Edge, to providers of proprietary platforms, such as Cisco and VMware, are squarely focused on this emerging opportunity. #EdgeComputing is the next trillion-dollar #IT industry. Everyone from #OpenSource communities to providers of proprietary platforms are focused on this opportunity.
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LF Edge is essentially making the case for employing the same open source technologies that are just now starting to dominate the next generation of cloud computing at the network edge. The expectation is a common framework running at both the edge and the cloud will facilitate the development of hybrid cloud computing environments that can truly span multiple clouds. Of course, everyone’s definition of the edge is different. The Akraino platform assumes there is an instance of Kubernetes running on some type of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform that functions as a gateway. In turn, that gateway is connected to all kinds of systems that may not have enough local compute resources to run Kubernetes. Regardless of the approach, the edge computing platforms are already rapidly being commodity compute platforms. The implications of that for managed service providers (MSPs) is profound because it means they can craft a service using any number of “white box” appliances. The truth is most end customers are not going to be especially interested in what infrastructure is used to deliver an edge computing service. Put it all together and it is clear edge computing is not likely to be as dominated by big brands the way traditional data centers are today. Instead, it will be the quality of the edge computing experience it enables that will determine which service provider ultimately rules the edge. Photo: Matthew Brodeur / Unsplash Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/27/open-source-community-flexes-edge-computing-muscle-managed-services-tips/ New Tip: Why your MSP should eat its own dog food Are you familiar with the phrase “Eat your own dog food?” I’ve sometimes heard it also referred to (more nicely!) as “Drink your own champagne”. It refers to the idea that you shouldn’t sell a product or solution to somebody if you’re not using it yourself. Why should you ask your clients to use something that you aren’t using yourself? An example of an MSP *not* eating its own dog foodI recently visited an MSP for a meeting. The business owner very kindly gave me a tour of their offices, including a trip into their comms room. Housing all manner of technology — including racks of servers, network switches, routers and cabling — the comms room was an impressive reflection on how technology has helped a small business grow. Unfortunately, it was also two other things: unsecured and untidy. Why should you expect your clients to use solutions that you aren’t using for your own business? It’s time for #MSPs to “eat their own dog food” when it comes to #security
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The comms room itself was easily accessible by any member of staff who could simply walk in to via an unlocked door. The racks housing the comms equipment was also insecure, as none of the racks were locked away from prying fingers. Then, there was the cabling. If I’m were to be kind, I’d call it functional. The reality is, it was a spaghetti-like mess of multi-colored cables strewn between cabinets in no discernible order. Later, the business owner and I sat down and discussed some of their challenges in sales and marketing. “Many of the small businesses we deal with do not treat IT seriously,” he told me. “They ignore security advice and simply do what is most convenient”. It made me wonder, maybe these customers are taking cues from the MSP’s comms room security measures? Do as I say, not as I doFar too many expect clients to do as we say, not as we do. We stress security concerns to our clients, telling them to make sure their IT equipment is secure, yet our own comms room is unsecured and untidy. This is where more IT businesses need to eat their own dog food. In the case of our unnamed MSP, they sell equipment and networking solutions to clients. They want those clients to have secure environments with well maintained, functioning network equipment. As a result, they need to reflect this ideal in their internal practices. Their comms room shouldn’t be functional — it should be a showcase of what an ideal comms room looks like. Somewhere that can be used as a sales enabler. Somewhere that clients can be brought for a tour to demonstrate to them what a good comms environment is. Can you eat your own dog food?How could your own business eat its own dog food? For instance, if you are selling security solutions to client’s, then you must use them yourself. To provide some examples::
Look around your business and determine if you are asking clients to do anything you are not doing yourself. If you are simply asking them to do as you say, not as you do, then don’t expect to receive the same degree of respect as your competitors who ARE eating their own dog food. Talk the talk AND walk the walkTo raise the bar of professionalism within the IT industry, we must do more than just talking about best practice — we must actually do it. Our clients won’t take our advice seriously if we don’t follow that advice ourselves. #MSPs must do more than just talk about best practice — we must actually do it. Clients won’t take our advice seriously if we don’t follow that advice ourselves.
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The validity of solutions and services we sell to a client will ring hollow if we aren’t using those solutions and services ourselves. We must eat our own dog food and be seen doing so. Photo: Javier Brosch / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/27/why-your-msp-should-eat-its-own-dog-food-managed-services-tips/ New Tip: Healthcare organizations need MSPs to serve as guards Last week, we looked at some of the emerging cybersecurity healthcare hazards in 2019, from ransomware to crypto. As healthcare continues to become more and more connected, the MSP’s role has never been more significant, especially with smaller to medium-sized healthcare enterprises. This week we continued our conversation with experts, looking at the growing role of an MSP in healthcare. SmarterMSP spoke with two health security specialists: Eerke Boiten, Professor in Cyber Security and Director of Cyber Technology Institute, at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK and Hussain Aldawood, from the University of Newcastle in Australia. Why an MSP?Healthcare’s growth as an MSP client segment has been explosive in the past five years and the opportunities are only increasing. The marriage between providers and MSPs is symbiotic and logical; healthcare professionals are focused on treating, not phishing. MSPs often make the most sense for the small-town hospital, local sports medicine clinic, or cosmetic dentistry practice. “As information technology and security are not the core business of hospitals, a lot of them usually outsource these services to a third party,” observes Aldawood, referring to MSPs. The growing digitization of healthcare and the integration of IoT has created more attack surfaces to defend, which has made the role of the MSP even more crucial. Your doctor may be operating on you, but an MSP is often handing him or her a virtual scalpel. MSPs have cemented themselves as indispensable partners in all areas of the healthcare ecosystem. The growing digitization of #healthcare and the integration of #IoT has created more attack surfaces to defend, which has made the role of the #MSP even more crucial.
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While the role of MSPs in care has grown, so too have the security vulnerabilities. The trove of data in healthcare is too irresistible for hackers. “Cybersecurity risks and cyber threats in the healthcare sector continue to become more complex. As a result, hackers may target healthcare organizations to steal data or ensure that they are not able to access their data until a ransom is paid. If a vendor compromises patient data in one way or another, we can then see major consequences,” describes Aldawood. The proliferation of wearables, portables, and mobile healthcare technology is adding a layer of additional security complexity. This complexity is one that most healthcare organizations aren’t equipped to handle, but MSPs are. Training and education, paired with top-of-the-line tools, is the best defense for an MSP in the healthcare trenches. “No tool is more valuable than training ever, especially when it comes to wearables and portable devices,” advises Aldawood. The most significant vulnerability that healthcare organizations still face is targeted phishing attacks. “This applies to hospitals and physician networks, as they carry so much personal and sensitive data,” states Aldawood. Innocent online searches can yield a trove of data for a bad actor. “Try searching for any product on the Internet. Go to their Facebook or Instagram after a couple of hours. They will most likely notice that they have been targeted by marketing in their feed based on their previous search,” details Aldawood. “Additionally, the same data from the previous search is likely also sent to different organizations. As a result, we can observe that peoples’ behaviors online are no longer private, leaving them open for targeted or phishing ransomware attacks,” Aldawood says. Defending against a phishing attack is where the security tools that an MSP wields are crucial. “To better protect the healthcare environment and keep infrastructure safe, a significant investment on the latest security tools and protocols must be made,” notes Aldawood. The future of MSPs and healthcareBoiten predicts that while ransomware and phishing attacks will need to be contended with, his concern for the future focuses on patient data protection. MSPs need to have a plan in place to secure data far beyond the minimum requirements. The concern for the future in #healthcare focuses on patient #DataProtection. MSPs need to have a plan in place to secure data far beyond the minimum requirements.
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“Apart from malware affecting the systems, I also worry about patient data,” admits Boiten. His worry goes beyond the traditional fear that data will end up in the hands of insurance companies looking to spike policy prices. “With the large amounts of behavioral and location information that is collected by internet giants, I think the more worrying future is where the data ends up,” states Boiten. He adds that the information will likely be available to intelligence organizations, making it possible to be used for full-scale surveillance and control. Boiten points to some internet giants that are currently looking at and harvesting data well beyond the scope of the company mission. Boiten says the technological tools are there to keep data safe. “Protecting the confidentiality of e-health data is possible with current technology, and likely integrity as well. However, integrity becomes a more serious risk than with other applications, if we look at an adversary modifying a medical instrument reading or a medicinal dosage. The significant risks are at the systemic level from feature creep and data hoarding, rather than third-party attacks on e-health systems,” acknowledges Boiten. Photo: Berkomaster / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/26/healthcare-organizations-need-msps-to-serve-as-guards-managed-services-tips/ New Tip: Fast growing SD-WAN market continues to rapidly evolve A new report from the market research firm Futorium finds adoption of software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) is occurring at faster rates than initially appreciated. The research report now estimates $2.2 billion in SD-WAN platform and tools revenue will be generated by 2020, growing to $2.75B in 2021 and $2.5B by 2022. That’s a 130 percent increase from a year ago. The report notes there are more than 40 vendors participating in a market that is going through several rapid transitions. Early on, the SD-WAN market consisted mainly of appliances that internal IT organizations would deploy in branch offices in place of a router. Those SD-WAN appliances enabled end users in those branch offices to connect directly to an Internet service versus forcing the organization to backhaul all their network traffic through a data center. It wasn’t long after the initial deployments that demand for managed SD-WAN services started to escalate. As always, traditional managed service providers and telecommunications carriers are involved in a pitched battle for that business. Of course, providers of routers did not decide to simply roll over and play dead. In addition to building their own SD-WAN appliances, providers of routers ae also making SD-WAN software available on top of their router platform. As adoption of SD-WANs became more widespread other issues started coming to the fore, the foremost of which was cybersecurity. Organizations found they were spending a lot of time integrating separate SD-WAN and cybersecurity control planes. That created demand for offerings where the SD-WAN and firewall are tightly integrated. Organizations take a holistic approachMore recently, organizations are adapting the way they approach the software-defined branch office. As organizations gear up to embrace WiFi 6 (otherwise known as 802.11ax), many of them are starting to consider the merits of integrating WiFi networks, SD-WAN, and cybersecurity functions into a common control plane. It’s not clear what percentage of this dynamically changing market will be delivered as managed services, versus an appliance installed and managed by an internal IT team. However, it’s worth noting that a middle ground between these two extremes is starting to emerge. MSPs will still be tasked with setting up the service. However, instead of managing every aspect of that service, the MSP gives internal IT teams access to console to co-managed traffic flows. Internal IT teams have rediscovered how critical wide are networks are to ensuring application performance in the cloud. That makes them a little less likely to want to completely outsource control over their wide area networks (WANs). #MSPs will be asked to support customers who are at different stages of an #SDWAN journey as the fast growing SD-WAN market continues to rapidly evolve.
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Most MSPs will be asked to support customers who are at different stages of an SD-WAN journey. Some may prefer to implement an SD-WAN within the context of an existing cybersecurity framework. Others will prefer to integrate cybersecurity and the SD-WAN control plane, while others will want the full software-defined branch experience. Regardless of the preferred approach, MSPs will be expected by different customers to support them no matter what their ultimate destination is or how far down the path they may be toward getting there. Photo: metamorworks / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/25/fast-growing-sd-wan-market-continues-to-rapidly-evolve-managed-services-tips/ New Tip: Recent acquisitions suggest data really could be the new oil We are fond of tech metaphors that help us understand the world. One such metaphor is that data is the new oil. Essentially it means data has so much value, that when mined and refined, it could have great value in the marketplace. If you doubt that, consider that this month alone, two data visualization companies have been acquired for almost $18 billion. First Google announced it was buying data visualization startup Looker for $2.6 billion, and before the ink dried on that announcement, Salesforce nabbed Tableau for $15.7 billion. That’s a lot of dough, and it shows how much these companies value not only data, but the ability to take that data and put it into formats that people can understand. This has generally fallen under the umbrella of business intelligence in the past, but with ever increasing amounts of data, the ability to pull out what’s important and present it in a visually appealing way has become more crucial than ever. Companies not only want to know how they’ve been doing, they want to use artificial intelligence to help them understand what the trends could mean to the future of their business. Whether looking back or ahead, the tools Google and Salesforce paid so much money for provide insight across an organization. It’s all about that dataAs an MSP, you could be helping your customers implement systems to store data like spreadsheets, databases, and for much larger companies, data lakes or data warehouses. Whatever level your clients happen to be on, being able to pull various views of the data and visualize it in a graphical way helps make it more understandable. As tech metaphors go, “data is the new oil” is spot on. It also represents an opportunity for #MSPs to help customers sort out, visualize, and take advantage of that #data
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It’s not always easy to grasp data collection or visualization for any business. Your customers may be looking for you to guide their tool choice and training after they make a purchase. It can be confusing to understand these tools to get the data in and even more challenging to get it out again, in a digestible form. These two acquisitions show just how much value data visualization has in the marketplace. It’s not unreasonable to expect more consolidation moving forward. This kind of market volatility can add to the difficulty of choosing a tool. Customers may want to go with a large company or they may prefer an independent, smaller one. Regardless, as a trusted IT adviser, it will be up to you to help them manage all of this. Much like understanding data itself, understanding the various elements of the data market takes some savvy, and you will be tasked with helping customers sort it all out. Photo: Krunja / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/25/recent-acquisitions-suggest-data-really-could-be-the-new-oil-managed-services-tips/ New Tip: Growth Hacking for MSPs: Startup Culture If you want to achieve accelerated growth in the Managed Services industry, you can’t do it alone. Not only does it take a team, but it also requires a certain type of culture. While “startup culture” is most known for ping pong tables, tee shirts, and open floor plans, there is far more below the surface that we can learn from. Brand everythingOne of our most impactful decisions was to move out of our shared office building and into our own standalone space. While tripling our square feet per person was expensive, it finally gave us the freedom to do what we wanted to do and be who we wanted to be as a business. In outfitting our new space, we branded everything we possibly could, from lime green walls, to logo-centric wall hangings, and light up signs. You couldn’t go anywhere in the building without knowing where you were and what you were part of. #GrowthHacking for #MSPs: There’s more than ping pong and tee shirts to #startup culture.
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This proved to be most beneficial in building our team for growth. When potential employees walked in the door, they felt excitement. Even more, they knew that the logo meant something to us and if they joined the team, they would become stewards of it as well. Building a brand is not about generating an endless amount of impressions on social media. It is about creating a badge that reflects your authentic identity as a business and then wearing it with honor. Stay leanOne way to lose the valuable culture you have built is by under-staffing and over-working your team. Some people think that this is what it means to be lean, but this is not necessarily the case. Staying lean is more about building a multi-talented team that can willingly wear many hats and trusting them to do so. While each individual may not be an expert in everything, they should have an eagerness to learn and willingness to try. Part of building this type of team is knowing that perfection has a price. If you micro-manage and demand absolute perfection, your productivity is sure to slow down. Demanding effort, instead of perfection, will ensure that your team is working hard and providing the best work they can at an accelerated pace. Being able to accept when something is not quite perfect is not always easy, but it is necessary to keep pace if you want to grow quickly. #GrowthHack: Being able to accept when something is not quite perfect is not always easy, but it is necessary to keep pace if you want to grow quickly like a #startup. #MSP
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Fail fast and oftenI recently had a conversation with an MSP founder who pointed out that most mature IT companies were around 10 years old. To him, this meant that fast growth was nearly impossible in this industry. Personally, I disagreed. I believe it takes these companies 10 years simply to make all the wrong decisions necessary to learn the right ones, eventually putting them on the right path for growth. Without recognizing your mistakes and pivoting, it can be an incredible challenge to grow. This is the quicksand that most smaller IT firms find themselves in today. One way to accelerate this process is to fail intentionally. Taking calculated risks, while knowing you have a high rate of failure, can put you on a growth shortcut you would have never found otherwise. This type of experimentation and innovative thinking will differentiate you from competitors. If you are listening to your customers and adapting toward demand, you can never take too many risks or pivot too many times. Trust the numbersOne of the key elements of growth in today’s business technology landscape is data. Using data and analytics as a compass, you can discover what your customer needs and why. Having blind trust in your numbers is not always easy. There are times when your gut and decades of experience tell you one thing, but the statistics may say otherwise. To this I would say that numbers never lie, but occasionally their truth can be misinterpreted. As with anything, reading analytics and interpreting them requires practice. Creating a culture around the use of data and analytics to make business decisions is needed to achieve fast growth in today’s market. Reading the signals accurately and making fast decisions will give you a significant advantage against your competitors. To maximize this advantage, surround yourself with team members that speak the analytics language and trust their judgement to react accordingly. For more ways to grow your Managed IT Business through integration and analytics, follow the Growth Hacking for MSPs series right here on Smarter MSP. More in-depth coverage and actionable examples of the topic can also be found on MSP Growth Hacks. Photo: Disobey Art / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/24/growth-hacking-for-msps-startup-culture-managed-services-tips/ Ask an MSP Expert: How can we improve our customers security posture? Managed Services Tips6/24/2019 New Tip: Ask an MSP Expert: How can we improve our customers’ security posture? Q: In today’s world, we know that security is a vital part of any managed service provider’s offering. How can we better position our security portfolio while improving our customers’ security posture? When small and medium businesses look to partner with a managed service provider, a strong cybersecurity posture is almost always a top priority. Often, cyber threats are topics that these businesses struggle to understand or protect themselves from on their own. That is why it’s so important for MSPs to build and maintain strong security postures for both themselves and their clients, to ensure that MSPs can keep them safe from these attacks. To help MSPs with this endeavor, we identified areas where they can improve and resources to help them do so. An MSP’s security offering must be multi-faceted and have lasting value to get the customer’s attention in today’s crowded marketplace. The importance of security assessmentsOffering a security assessment feature (like the one built into Barracuda’s Managed Workplace RMM tool) gives your MSP an easy way to check on the overall “health” of your customer. This can identify specific vulnerabilities that appear within their site or network, and the MSP can share the info with customers to discuss how to address the issues. Along with strengthening the security posture of both parties in the partnership, security assessments can also provide business value for the MSP and its customers. Firstly, the assessment can recommend how to solve security vulnerabilities efficiently, resulting in quicker resolutions for both members in the partnership. Second, it is an effective way to demonstrate your value as a service provider. The report presents info that is not exceedingly “technical” and is easily understandable for most decision makers, no matter what type of business they run. The easiest way to improve a company’s #CyberSecurity posture is with assessments and #SecurityAwareness training for employees. #ManagedServices
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An assessment tool that specifically focuses on the email security of an MSP’s clients is also particularly important. Tools like an email threat scanner allow the MSP to find cyberattacks that are already living in the inbox or account, and receive recommendations on how to remove the current threat and protect against future ones. This form of an assessment can also provide a full report on the current vulnerability of a client to email-borne threats. End user security awareness training and education provides valueStrong security solutions and a team dedicated to protecting customers’ networks is vitally important to creating a better security posture. However, all of your hard work can easily be undone by the weakest part of the organization’s network — their employees. An MSP can build the strongest security defense possible for a company, but it will ultimately be useless if the company’s employees are unknowingly handing over vital information to bad actors or otherwise exposing their company to risk. To ensure that end users don’t act as cybersecurity liabilities, MSPs should offer a security awareness training program. In addition to helping protect the organization’s network, it also reduces the MSP’s security workload. With these simple, easy-to-employ concepts, you can improve your customers’ security posture drastically. Leading with these offerings when pitching your security services to prospects and customers will quickly prove your MSP’s value and remove any doubts the other party has about entering a managed IT services partnership with your business. Photo: Jirsak / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/24/ask-an-msp-expert-how-can-we-improve-our-customers-security-posture-managed-services-tips/ New Tip: Tech Time Warp: “A Logic Named Joe” If you’re looking for a good tech-related read this summer — something in the genre of Black Mirror — you can’t do any better than “A Logic Named Joe,” a short story published in the March 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. “Astounding” is an apt description for this prescient short story by William Fitzgerald Jenkins, who worked under the pseudonym Murray Leinster. “Joe” is not a human but rather an unnamed “logic”—a device that sounds eerily like your personal computer or smartphone. The story’s narrator is a maintenance man at the logics manufacturing plant, and he describes how the logic functions: “You know the logics setup. You got a logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get. It’s hooked in to the tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you punch ‘Station SNAFU’ on your logic. Relays in the tank take over an’ whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin’ comes on your logic’s screen. Or you punch ‘Sally Hancock’s Phone’ an’ the screen blinks an’ sputters an’ you’re hooked up with the logic in her house an’ if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today’s race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin’ Garfield’s administration or what is PDQ and R sellin’ for today, that comes on the screen too.” Sound familiar?At the risk of revealing spoilers, Joe has a slight manufacturing defect that allows logic users to search for illicit or personal information. It’s up to our unnamed hero to make the necessary modifications to prevent complete takeover by machine (and save his marriage). As he puts it, “You might say I saved civilization an’ not be far wrong.” If you’re looking for a #tech related read this summer, in the genre of #BlackMirror, you can’t do any better than the short story “A Logic Named Joe.” #TechTimeWarp
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Jenkins—known as the “Dean of Science Fiction” for his prolific career, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s—was also an inventor. He patented a front projection system used to film special effects. You can read “A Logic Named Joe” online courtesy of science fiction publisher Baen, or you can listen to a podcast reading on “Journey Into …” Photo: maradon 333 / Shutterstock Looking for Affordable Managed Services Provider in Carson City? Learn More and Get a Fast and Easy Quote Now. Visit Carson City Managed Services Here: Source: Smarter MSP Read more here: https://managedservices.home.blog/2019/06/21/tech-time-warp-a-logic-named-joe-managed-services-tips/ |