Ask An MSP Expert: What are some MSP marketing musts for 2019?
Q: We recently hired a new marketing team member starting in the New Year. While we’ve done marketing for our IT service business in the past, it’s always been in fits and starts. I want to make sure our new...
Email? That’s free, surely?
The task of hosting and selling email is often regarded as a thankless one. With the likes of Google mail offered as a free service and many hosting companies providing free (or massively discounted) email accounts with the hosted domain...
8 MSP security trends that emerged in 2018
For MSPs, 2018 was anything but a dull year. Change is constant in the world of cybersecurity and the year delivered on that truism in spades. Before 2018 slips into the rearview mirror, let’s look back at some of the...
MSPs need to find ways to stay relevant in the DevOPs era
The single most important thing for managed service providers (MSPs) to do is to align their technology skills with their customers needs. After all, most IT organizations are only going to look outside for help when they can’t do a...
Sales & Marketing
In 2019, make your MSP’s website a lead generator, NOT just an IT services brochure
Years ago, I worked as an independent computer consultant — back when that was still a pretty novel idea. Computers weren’t ingrained into every small business the way they are now. Not every organization, large and small, was connected to...
How easily are you FOOLED by a rookie in an expert’s costume?
John Edwards, the psychic medium known for talking to people’s dead relatives, makes millions selling tickets to two-hour events all over the world. At these events, he performs (key word: PERFORMS) his psychic feat to people wanting to believe in...
5 Reasons selling Password Management-as-a-Service makes sense
After working at four different MSPs and eventually founding my own, I’ve experienced firsthand the pains of trying to manage hundreds of passwords so techs can gain access to and support client networks. Even though these pains can be hard...
Security
Ask an MSP Expert: How can MSPs strengthen their clients’ defenses from cryptominers?
Q: I have some customers with fairly large networks, and one of them is a business college. It seems like all those latent CPUs would be an attractive target for cryptominers. We’ve been taking steps to protect them, but I’m...
Traditional Trojans meet cryptos
Students at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia were caught off guard recently as they logged online to check their grades and work on projects as they headed towards semester finals. To their surprise, the school’s network was shut-down...
Preparing clients to be resilient in the face of ongoing security threats
Most companies understand that at some point they are going to be the victim of a hack or data breach. Just days ago, we saw that even Amazon isn’t immune, when Amazon admitted it had lost names and emails in...
Better Business
Don’t turtle up, take charge
On paper, every business wants to be a leader. You want to lead your category, your industry, and your region. You want to be number one and reap all of the benefits with rising to the top of a competitive...
How MSPs can find cloud pricing bargains
Years ago, Filene’s department store in Downtown Boston had a “bargain basement” where clothing and items that weren’t selling in the main store got deeply discounted to move them out. It worked beautifully as people loved digging through bins for...
Ask an MSP Expert: How can we be more efficient with our time?
Q: As we continue to grow our business, it seems like we have less time in the day to accomplish everything we need to get done. What can we do to save more time? No matter what type of business...
Tech Insight
Definition of hybrid cloud computing is rapidly evolving
There may never come a day when all application workloads run in a public cloud. However, the rate at which application workloads will shift towards public clouds appears to be poised to accelerate in the next few years.
Tech Time Warp: Patent issued for Williams Tube, an early form of RAM
After World War II, British electrical engineer Frederic Williams found himself on the hunt for his next project. During the war, he had developed radar technology that could identify friendly aircraft, using “Friend or Foe,” or IFF, radar. So, what...
Linux Foundation is looking for a few good MSPs with networking expertise
The Linux Foundation is looking for managed service providers (MSP) and systems integrators to start contributing to multiple projects seeking to transform networking using open source code.