Natrix Technologies got its start in 1998 as a systems integrator selling, implementing and supporting servers, switches, and routers. The company evolved into a managed services provider (MSP) in 2009 and today holds certifications with Barracuda, Microsoft, and Cisco. The MSP is involved in the installation and configuration of IT, IP telephony, and quality management, but had cybersecurity needs.
Eric Rivest joined Natrix in 2005 and serves as the company’s VP, which entails coordinating sales, developing new business, and managing vendor relationships.
Customers understand seriousness of cyberthreats
Rivest tells us that, “Just about everyone you talk to today knows of a company that suffered a data breach or ransomware attack. They also know the stats about companies going out of business because they weren’t able to recover from an attack. What they don’t have, in many cases, is technical IT staff on-hand. That’s where an MSP’s expertise is needed.”
Balancing IT needs with cybersecurity budgets
Natrix built its cybersecurity bundle with Barracuda. “In our offering, we’re not proposing any other products,” says Rivest. “We’ve been partners with Barracuda since 2006. They’re leaders in the space, they have a comprehensive security portfolio, and their products are competitively priced. By standardizing on one vendor, it reduces our staff training and customer support costs. Instead of logging into multiple vendor portals, we can manage our customers’ security from one place.”
Natrix offers a basic managed services bundle for every customer, which includes Barracuda Essentials for Email Security, Barracuda Web Application Security, and Barracuda RMM – a security-centric remote monitoring and management tool. “We also recommend Barracuda Sentinel as an added layer of spearphishing defense, as well as Barracuda PhishLine for end-user security awareness training,” he says. “Customers really see the value of adding Sentinel and PhishLine to their bundle after they’ve experienced a spear-phishing attack or an employee clicks on an email link and unleashes a malicious program.”
Sell managed cybersecurity services to other MSPs
Natrix is projecting 25 percent revenue growth this year over last year, which Rivest attributes to several factors. One factor is the MSP’s focus on managed services growth. “Over the past year, we stopped working with our three largest break-fix clients,” he says. “Although each one generated a decent amount of revenue, it’s not nearly as lucrative as building a recurring revenue business.”
The MSP is also winning new business from an unexpected source — other MSPs. “One of the biggest challenges many MSPs are facing is the shortage of local IT talent,” says Rivest. “Although they know and understand the opportunity to sell cybersecurity solutions and services, they don’t have the internal resources to manage, support, and capitalize on it. In an attempt to not let these opportunities pass them by, more and more MSPs in our area are contacting us about hosting their
customers’ IT assets in our data center and paying us to manage their security incidence response.”
Another driver behind Natrix’s growth is its new BDR (backup and disaster recovery) service. “Our core managed services offering already includes Office 365 cloud backup, but BDR enables clients to back up other business applications and servers in our data center and locally,” says Rivest.
“There are several ways we can provide this service depending on the client’s needs, but the bottom line is that BDR gives clients peace of mind in the event of a server failure. If something
happens they can recover their data and get back up and running quickly.”
Rivest adds that Barracuda MSP offers a powerful set of tools for an MSP to become a one-stop-shop for its customers. “They’re great partners, and they’ve consistently been channel focused,” he says. “We’ve worked with other vendors over the years that start channel-friendly, and then they eventually sell directly to end-users. We’ve never had this problem with Barracuda. They’ve always known that if their reseller partners are successful, then they’ll be successful.”
To read about how other Partners are improving their businesses, check out Barracuda MSP’s collection of Success Stories.
Photo: NIKCOA / Shutterstock
