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With the shift to more flexible and remote work options becoming a lasting trend, it is more critical than ever for businesses to ensure their IT asset management best practices are keeping pace. In this post, we'll review the basics of IT asset management and provide tips for gaining efficiencies and reducing costs across each stage of the IT asset lifecycle. Read more
Looking to build your basic IT knowledge in 2021? In this post we'll cover some general network monitoring and network management best practices that MSPs and IT departments use to support their organizations.
Any discussion about IT is eventually going to lead towards network monitoring and management. All told, one of the most well-understood roles of an IT department or IT provider is that of keeping a business’ essential systems up and running.
Network monitoring is a critical part of that role, ensuring that all networking components like routers, switches, servers, firewalls, and virtual machines are tracked, evaluated, and optimized continuously. Proactive monitoring can prevent network downtime or failures, and remote management reduces the time and resources needed to perform critical updates or make on-the-fly changes to an IT environment. Read more
Managed service providers are always looking for ways to save money and raise profits, and increasingly many are looking at their technology stack and asking whether there are free RMM tools that could lower their vendor bill. One popular type of software among some MSPs is open source RMM software, but while these alternatives can benefit some, there are trade-offs to keep in mind.
While “backup” may simply mean “backup” to the majority of SMB clients, MSPs know there is a wide variety of tools and options for getting the job done. In this post, we’ll breakdown the differences between two of the primary types of backup — file backup and image backup — and share examples of situations where each can work best. Read more
What big changes are MSPs planning to make to their software stacks in 2021? The results of our recent survey give an idea of what the most popular new additions might be — and there are a few surprises. Read more
As an MSP, monitoring and alerting are central to the services you provide. Good monitoring practices enable you to proactively identify issues, resolve them faster, and be more effective. Better monitoring can also play a key role in generating additional revenue and keeping your clients more satisfied.
The challenge is knowing what to monitor for, what requires an alert, which issues can be automatically resolved, and which need a personal touch. That knowledge can take years to develop, and even then the best teams can still struggle with reducing alert fatigue and ticket noise across client devices.
To help those just getting started condense that ramp-up time and narrow their focus, we’ve put together this list of ideas for 25+ conditions to monitor. These recommendations are based on suggestions from our partners and from NinjaRMM’s experience helping MSPs build effective, actionable monitoring. Read more
NinjaRMM’s VAR program has officially launched! This is an exciting time for the company and with this new partner program, we expect to see our sleek, easy-to-use solution expand into larger and larger use-cases. In this post, we'll discuss why a VAR should be interested in an RMM solution and what makes NinjaRMM's program unique.
With the rise in remote work, more and more companies are turning to RMMs to manage, secure and monitor their employees. At the onset of the coronavirus, many businesses relied on VPNs to keep their employees connected to the office. Now, as our new remote work reality sets in, business leaders are looking more closely at RMMs as a more mature solution capable of providing all the benefits of a VPN and so much more.
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
On Tuesday, news broke that Microsoft included a fix for a critical remote code execution vulnerability that affects Windows DNS servers in its July 2020 updates. The vulnerability appears to be as bad as it gets, receiving a 10/10 severity score on the CVSS scale.
That means one thing you'll definitely want to do this week is patch as quickly as possible or apply a workaround mitigation described here.
You'll likely be hearing a lot about this one over the next few days, but don't panic or obsess. Patch when you can.
Ok, on to this week's tools and tips. Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Happy July! The first half of 2020 is officially in the books, and, this year, simply getting to the back nine feels like an accomplishment.
Hopefully you've recently found time to step back and take a breath, or you'll get the chance soon. This halfway point may be a good time to take stock of the plans and goals you set out with at the beginning of the year, have a nice laugh, and adjust course to finish the year out as strong as possible.
If you're looking to make up for lost time and get your sales efforts back on track we've got a great event to check out this Thursday, July 9 at 1pm ET | 5pm GMT.
We're going to be talking all about How to Nurture and Convert Your Sales Leads, with plenty of hard data, awesome examples, and interactive discussion. Come be part of the conversation or just listen in!
Here are this week's tools and tips. Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
It's another week with some encouraging signs of economic recovery on one hand, but troubling spikes of new COVID-19 cases on the other. We hope things are okay where you are, that business is good, but — more importantly — that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.
Anecdotally, the sense we're getting from many of our MSP partners is that they're feeling much more optimistic than they were a couple of months ago. The situation has changed enough to where their primary focus is veering back to sales and growth, and that's extremely encouraging to see.
If you're in that boat, or hopefully steering in that direction, we've got two upcoming events for you to check out. Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Hope you had a good weekend, and (if you celebrated) a great Father's Day. Before we dive into this week's resources, I have another small favor to ask... we're in the process of developing a new series on MSP sales and marketing (what works & what doesn't), but before we get too ahead of ourselves, I'd love to get input from you first! Can you help me by answering 3 quick questions?
Thank you very much in advance! Now, on to this week's list.
Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Hope the new week is off to a great start for you. No long preamble from me this week — just on to the good stuff! Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Many of us may be finding it difficult to focus on work today. If you're like me, larger events may be putting the individual items on your to-do lists into perspective. But when you work in IT people rely on you, and that means your work matters.
You may not get to see the impact of that firsthand every day, but when you do, it makes it all worthwhile. This week, in addition to sharing tips and tools, I wanted to share an example that proves that point. It also shows how much people can need and appreciate having someone like you to support them right now.
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Hope you've managed to take a breather lately. I took advantage of the holiday weekend to decompress and realized that, like many folks, I've been more or less running full speed since early March. I think a lot of us (vendors, clients, MSPs) have reached a point where we feel the need to pull up out of the dead sprint we've been maintaining and shift back to a more sustainable and strategic mindset.
Enough with the "one day at a time / just make it work for now" phase. This week's resources will help get you thinking and planning long term again.
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
More businesses are reopening or inching closer to it, but for the majority, the consensus seems to be that it's going to be a far cry from "business as usual" for quite some time. Many are still trying to determine what their "new normal" is going to look like, and maybe you've been playing an important role in that conversation for your clients.
Last week, I had a chance to participate in a great virtual conference for MSPs hosted by SmileBack called "Remote Connect." I moderated a fireside chat with former MSP and current MSP consultant Richard Tubb.
Richard always has smart things to say (check out his podcast for examples), and he made one particular point that really stuck with me.
He said that many MSPs are currently enjoying more client buy-in than ever thanks to the WFH preparedness they advocated and/or the quick transition they enabled. BUT, unfortunately, most client memories are short. It's imperative for MSPs to make use of that goodwill capital now. Because every day that passes it dissolves a little more. Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Hope you had a good weekend. We're fresh off our MSP Security Summit, which was a big success. Over 1,100 registered for the event, and if you missed it we'll be offering on-demand recordings from it soon.
In the meantime, it also gave me a bunch of great resources that I'll be sprinkling into these emails over the next few weeks alongside the standard mix of tips, tactics, and tools. Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
If you needed any additional proof that a real, live human is behind these emails this week I dropped the ball and am getting this out way later than usual. I'm sorry for the delay, but hope you'll still get use out of the resources below.
If you're curious what's been keeping me busy check out our upcoming MSP Security Summit scheduled for next Thursday, May 7. It's shaped up to be a great event and much bigger than we originally anticipated. Hope to see you there! Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
On Saturday, news broke that Cognizant, one of the world's largest IT consulting firms and MSPs, is grappling with a ransomware attack that has been triggering service disruptions for some of the company's clients.
Details are limited, but it's an unfortunate reminder that attackers aren't suspending operations during this crisis, and MSPs are still considered a high-value target.
With that in mind, this week we're sharing two important security resources along with an invitation to join us for a major security-focused virtual event.
Or, if you're looking for something that can help you improve your sales and marketing, we've got a couple of things to share on that front, too. Read more
MSP Bento is our weekly collection of practical, bite-sized tips, tools, and tutorials. Want to start getting it in your inbox? Sign up here.
Through the conversations we've been having, it's clear there's a lot of stress and pain out there, but also a lot of opportunities resulting in wins and goodwill.
We've heard stories of MSPs receiving tearful thank-you's from clients, of hold-outs finally seeing the light and converting to managed services contracts, of owners finding ways to show their techs how much they're appreciated.
In short, it's obviously a challenging time, but it's also inspiring knowing so many of you are playing such an integral role in keeping people going.
Scott Galloway recently said, "The terrible thing about crises is they always happen. The wonderful thing is they always end."
Here's to being one week closer, and to capturing the opportunities to do more than just struggle through. Read more
