When you only start MSP business and work with your first client, it’s easy to provide on-demand remote support. But as you grow and add more and more customers to your portfolio, it gets harder to manage all their systems manually. Especially this concerns remote backup service.
Whether you perform remote PC backup manually or whether you make it with a script, eventually you start looking for MSP software that will give you more advantages in performing managed backup service.
So what are the essential features of the managed backup software? Let’s take a look.
#1. Single Control Panel
This feature covers a range of different options, such as:
- Remote management. The managed service provider software should let you manage all the backup and restore jobs remotely for each of your clients.
- Monitoring. The MSP software should also let you monitor all the backup jobs in one single control panel so that you don’t waste your time logging into each machine that you take care of.
- Silent installation. You don’t need to bother end-users with remote sessions and save the time of your employees.
- Remote deploy. It will save you tons of time and efforts if you set up an agreement with your client to store all the vital data in one location (e.g. C:/My Documents). Then all you would need to do is to create a single backup plan for this directory and deploy it for all your customer’s machines.
#2. Pay-as-You-Go Pricing
Monthly payments are the most convenient way for an MSP to pay for the backup software. Also, this is the way most of the storage providers charge their clients as well.
Just multiply the number of machines you backup by the monthly price and get the final sum. Thus, you can know for sure how big are your backup costs and manage your pricing policies accordingly.
However, the backup software with the yearly payment structure can be more cost-effective. If you select the MSP software with this type of payment, you should also sign a yearly contract with your client so as not to lose money if he decides to leave you in favor for somebody else.
#3. Notifications
While performing remote backup service it may be difficult for a managed service provider to monitor the backup jobs all the time as it requires constant monitoring of the control panel.
The MSP software should be able to automatically notify you about any important event, be it the backup job start or failure.
If you set up a specific storage limit for each of your clients (and charge them accordingly), the software should also be able to notify you when the client gets closer to this limit so that you could offer him a bigger package.
#4. Patch Management
As we’ve already mentioned above, it may be fine for an MSP to manually update the backup software when he has a relatively small amount of machines to manage. But as a service provider grows, it may become a literal nightmare to update all the pieces of software on all the PCs and servers, so there should be an automatic solution for this task.
So, these are the major features that any MSP should look for when choosing the managed backup software for his clients. And this is where MSP360 Managed Backup Service may come forth to assist you.
Achieve Goals with MSP360 Managed Backup
#1. Single Control Panel
With MSP360 you can manage all your clients’ machines in one single control panel. After you sign up for our managed backup service, you will get access to the control panel where you can manage all the machines where the MSP software is installed to. You can:
- Create backup and recovery plans;
- Start or stop them remotely;
- Monitor the status of all the backup and recovery jobs on one page;
- Silently install the software on all the machines via CLI;
- Deploy a common backup plan to all your clients’ machines or only to a selected group of them so as to automate your tasks and save tons of time.
#2. Flexible Pricing Model
As we’ve mentioned above, yearly pricing is really good in terms of cost-efficiency of remote backup service. However, you might probably need some flexibility.
MSP360 Managed Backup Service is billed annually or monthly, so you can choose whatever price model suits you best.
#3. Notifications
When you create a backup or restore plan, you can set up all kind of notifications imaginable. You can receive them:
- When backup starts
- When backup finishes successfully or when it fails
- When storage limit is about to finish
Also, you can set up a scheduled group report for each of your clients that you will receive daily, weekly or monthly. This document can be really handy as you can send it to your clients and let him know that his data is secure.
#4. Patch management
MSP360 Managed Backup Service allows you to automatically update the MSP software on all your clients’ machines. Just check the corresponding option at the “Downloads” section and forget about manual software updates.
Also, learn how MSP360 helps to address backup challenges on our Youtube channel.