By: Jim Brennan, President, Managed Services IT

I own and lead an MSP in the greater Philadelphia area and have been providing custom IT support options for businesses of all types and sizes since 2008. We pride ourselves on customer loyalty and satisfaction, so much in fact that one of our trademark differentiators is our guaranteed one-hour response time.  

Upholding this rule and being a trusted and committed partner to our clients has been a key to our success, but it’s one of many. To deliver on our guarantee while scaling our practice and adapting to offer the best services, choosing the right vendors and technologies has always been one of my biggest priorities as President.  

While I could talk shop all day on this subject, I want to share with you three investments I’ve made into growing my Microsoft Azure practice that have paid off big time especially when it comes to time savings.  

StorageCraft OneXafe 

One common pain point MSPs encounter across client needs is navigating how to move large amounts of data, especially given the amount of digital transformation and cloud initiatives. After working in IT for nearly two decades, I understand this issue well. Which is why I was instantly hooked after using OneXafe, an easily managed backup and recovery solution which presents an incredibly easy way to move a large on-prem environment to the cloud.  

To use a real-life example, my team and I had recent client request in which they wanted a brand-new and scalable environment with all their files and data. This all included the migration 50 users, SQL Server file server and their domain controller. This migration was prepped using the OneXafe Solo device one week in advance and we were able to move 3TB of data in one weekend and completed the migration. This tool helps eliminate labor during server migrations. 

Nerdio

At Managed Services IT we understand and tell our clients all the time that IT is any company’s most valuable asset, but it requires enormous amounts of time, money, and manpower to manage effectively. I found the same to be true with Microsoft Azure until I found the “easy button,” Nerdio.  

In utilizing Nerdio’s multitenant Azure management platform for MSPs, my team has had three engineers doing the work of probably seven as we’ve scaled up our virtual desktop offerings to support the boom in remote work. We’ve got provisioning of Azure Virtual Desktop environments down to 27 minutes on average and have cut back significantly on the amount of nights and weekend hours logged because of Nerdio’s amazing support team and scripted actions. 

Pax8

Finding a strong distributor to partner with can often be one of the biggest advantages you can get over your competition. Pax8 has been an invaluable resource in helping us find the right technologies and vendors to support our growing Azure practice and provide timely and insightful advice for selling cloud solutions to our healthcare customers. Our team at Pax8 knows the Azure ecosystem, and its key players, so well and are tapped in across their network of amazing vendors like Nerdio and OneXafe.  

If you are looking to expand or establish a cloud practice in Microsoft Azure in the year ahead, the three companies I’ve profiled here are fantastic resources to get you started.