Circle Computer Resources Replaces SolarWinds N-central With Kaseya VSA
Overview
Circle Computer Resources (CCR) is a managed services provider (MSP). With a team of 7 IT technicians, CCR currently services 1,500 endpoints. What differentiates the company from its competitors is the fact that it has incorporated DevOps where they make tools for themselves and their clients.
Having DevOps in their team has helped CCR do way more with less. CCR identifies itself as a technology success partner (TSP) and wants to take a leap from being considered as a utility to a decision-making stakeholder. Since their biggest cost is people, they aim to remain a lean team while growing the number of endpoints they service.
About
Established in 1986, Circle Computer Resources is a managed services provider that leverages technology to deliver high-value services, follow through with their promises and add value to their clients’ businesses.
“The transparency, the people, the automation, the quick help gives us a feeling that we have a vendor that actually has our back” Elliot StirnIT Managed Services Supervisor
Challenges
- Poor automation and a lack of basic features required by all MSPs
- Weak customer support and delay in resolving common IT issues
- Lack of transparency and incongruous alignment of business goals
The solution lacked basic automation capabilities and other relevant features that MSPs require to streamline their IT environment. Additionally, the SolarWinds N-central support was very inefficient and unwilling to provide proper resolutions to CCR’s grievances. The support would try and pitch their upcoming RMM tool to them, which ironically lacks the capabilities of the existing version of the solution. That’s when they decided to switch to Kaseya.
Solutions
- Kaseya VSA offers customizable IT capabilities with powerful automation and complete visibility of the entire IT infrastructure from a single pane of glass.
- Kaseya offers efficient customer support with quick response and resolution times.
- Kaseya offers complete transparency by sharing its vision for MSPs to align their business goals with.
Making the Switch to Kaseya
Kaseya’s Account Manager walked them through the entire process and got them what they needed for onboarding in a timely manner.
“The level of what you can automate in VSA is far superior to N-central”, says Elliot Stirn, IT Managed Services Supervisor at Circle Computer Resources.
With hands-on experience of using both N-central and VSA in the real world, Elliot understands the difference between the two.
Kaseya VSA offers fully customizable automation capabilities that are extremely powerful and rewarding for mature MSPs.
Talking about the highly efficient customer support of Kaseya as another differentiating factor, Elliot remarks, “The support from SolarWinds, in general, was just horrendous. It took two days for anybody to respond to a technical ticket, and sometimes it would even take weeks”. On the other hand, Kaseya’s support team would get back within hours and resolve tickets in a timely manner. The level of support and knowledge of Kaseya’s team is far superior.
Elliot and his team were impressed by Kaseya’s single pane of glass vision of integrating all the different solutions, such as service desk, backup, IT documentation and more into a single console. “We already had IT Glue, Unitrends and RapidFire Tools, and it seemed like we had all these Kaseya products without having the main one”, remarks Elliot. He further adds, “It seemed like an easy fit because the other tools are great, so this one must be great.”
“We set up VSA and customized it to enable the monitoring thresholds. We are looking at the monitoring sets that monitor with trends and uses logic”, says Elliot. Customizing VSA for logic-based alerts helped Elliot and his team detect recurring issues and identify underlying problems such as hardware failure and more. “In N-central, it was just noise. With VSA, it’s trending in the sense that it’s using smart logic instead of dumb logic,” remarks Elliot.
Ideas for Business Improvement
Talking about his idea of business improvement, Elliot states, “We’re not there yet. But my plan is to completely transition to the VSA’s helpdesk ticket system. Instead of using our support center, we’ll just use that one. It makes more sense for us to use that because it is integrated with VSA.” This will reduce overheads for CCR and make it more convenient to use since it’s all integrated. Elliot adds, “We’re trying to get to the point of how we can make revenue off of automated activities.”
“I have not had a bad experience with Kaseya yet. It didn’t matter who I was talking to, sales and engineers, account management, everyone’s lovely over there. That’s a huge plus for me. And also, the transparency of sharing the vision of where Kaseya wants to go and what the company wants to do because it aligns with what I would want in a tool. I really like the idea behind IT Complete,” remarks Elliot.
When supporting clients, it makes sense not having to open ten tabs to do one thing. Kaseya IT Complete is a comprehensive suite of all MSP solutions that is designed and purpose-built to help an MSP streamline its IT operations.
Kaseya VSA is a feature-rich RMM solution that helps Elliot and his team at CCR remotely manage and monitor all endpoints with integrated tools to increase IT efficiency, bolster security, provide expansive asset visibility and reduce IT operational costs.
