PARTNER SUCCESS STORY
Why This MSP Made the Switch Back to ConnectWise After 6 Years
Allierad started its business as a managed service provider in Houston, Texas. Offering services in managed support, business continuity, IT infrastructure, and IT consulting, Allierad manages over 90 clients and 1,500 endpoints. They serve a wide variety of clients, with many in the healthcare sector.
Challenge
To offer the security their clients expected, ITS NYC spent a year preparing their business—from securing their own footprint to ingraining security into their culture—finding the right solutions.
Solution
ITS NYC discovered the value of ConnectWise Cybersecurity Management, incorporated it into their managed services portfolio, and started having meaningful security conversations with customers and prospects.
Results
ITS NYC’s security solutions complete a holistic, high-value service offering while positioning the firm for success with industry trends around security and cloud.
Allierad was originally a ConnectWise PSA™ (formerly Manage) partner when they founded their business in 2010, but left ConnectWise for Autotask about six years ago. However, they realized Autotask was not offering the needed features, so they switched back to ConnectWise earlier this year, starting with PSA.
“We wanted to just replace our PSA, but we ended up replacing all our tools,” said Richard Rubin, president and CEO of Allierad. “We’re very happy we made the switch—we don’t think there is anything in the PSA market that is as good as ConnectWise PSA.”
Best-in-class products to ensure operational excellence
After using PSA for a couple of months, Allierad was looking to move their RMM to a software that integrated seamlessly because they found their existing RMM cumbersome when it came to recovering client data. They were in the market for an RMM that was easy to use and offered strong patching capabilities, given that security is a top concern for their clients.
p>After evaluating various RMM options, Allierad decided to make the move to ConnectWise RMM™.
“We came from a very similar tool to ConnectWise Automate, with a rich feature set and many knobs and dials to turn. ConnectWise RMM has different capabilities compared to Automate, but it’s still a very powerful tool for us regardless. Patching is a big part of our business. Our clients are now more concerned about security, their data protection, and compliance—RMM fulfils that need for us.”
Going above and beyond
In addition to RMM, Allierad has developed a strong security practice backed by ConnectWise Co-Managed Backup and ConnectWise NOC Services™. They were not looking for backup management initially. Previously, backups were managed in-house.
Allierad had a 10-day deadline to shift their backups to a new cloud as their previous business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) contract with N-Able was expiring. Andrew Roca, Senior Solution Strategist at ConnectWise recommended NOC Services, allowing Allierad to successfully complete their first backup of 83 servers and 40 terabytes of data.
“The NOC team worked through the night to ensure that we were getting backups. If any failures arose or anything needed to be tweaked, they had resources available to get it done quickly. When our contract ended on June 1, we could leave our previous partner and had our clients protected the whole time,” Rubin explained. “The ConnectWise tools we use keep us working smart, while helping us protect our clients and get them to where they need to be.”
Increased technician efficiency
Allierad wanted to take their backups to the next level, choosing Acronis as their third-party backup vendor, with Co-Managed Backup providing network operations center (NOC) support. They felt that the 24/7/365 technical support and management of BCDR operations by the NOC Services team worked well for them.
When their backups were taken care of, Allierad’s technicians had the time to focus on other tasks. They no longer have to assign resources to check on backups daily to ensure that they’re successful. The plus point was that they received daily reports, resulting in saved time, increased productivity, and complete peace of mind.
“ConnectWise NOC Services continues to be a valuable asset to us. They make it to where we sleep better at night.”
Driving the future of MSP with ConnectWise
The ability to deliver consistent excellence for their customers in all areas is what sets Allierad apart. For example, a desktop SSD drive failed earlier this year, and the Allierad support team was able to recover the data from the cloud with Acronis and restore it back to the desktop. “It was a very seamless process to do, compared to other restorations that we’ve done over time,” said Rubin.
Allierad also began using ConnectWise MDR™ with SentinelOne as their antivirus, coupled with integrated monitoring by ConnectWise SOC Services™. They saw a significant decrease in alerts that needed action. “When we see that a threat is blocked, my team no longer has to go in and edit the policies and rules. All we need to do is send an email to the SOC team for them to either whitelist or blacklist that threat. It’s very low-touch for us.”
According to Allierad, ConnectWise has played an integral role in their success, helping them provide value to their service and build better customer relationships. “Coming back to ConnectWise has been wonderful for us. ConnectWise has grown tremendously over the past six years when we were last partners. On top of new product features, acquisition of companies, and integration of said companies with ConnectWise, the overall account management and resources at our disposal have been excellent.”