Managed service providers (MSPs) struggle with the basic tenets of sales competition—price and differentiation—at a more pure level than most other IT enterprises. At the end of the day, they need to be cheaper than their competition or better in some way that keeps their customers happy.
There are a number of tools available for MSPs designed to better manage and support customers, but the Uplogix out-of-band platform is a better tool belt, enabling unique functionality for delivering strong networks while controlling costs and providing unique features that help deliver extra value to customers.
Differentiating in a crowded market: Out-of-band as a service
With multi-tenant access capabilities of Uplogix, MSPs can give customers highly-granular & secure visibility and control over their gear while retaining control of customer premise devices. As an add-on service or value-add functionality, customers are enabled to solve more issues on their own, instead of blaming the carrier. We call this the “mean time to innocence,” and knowing who owns the problem, especially in the early stages, is almost as important as knowing the solution.
- WAN traffic failover | Having the ability to channel network traffic over the out-of-band link if the primary link is down is a cost-effective back-up for price-sensitive customers.
- Mass upgrades | Giving customers the ability to update configs and OS files on their gear with confidence can be like an insurance policy, enabling quick response to zero-day exploits that often go unpatched or are delayed.
- Proactive alerting | MSPs aren’t known for helping troubleshoot customer equipment issues. With Uplogix, customers can receive alerts on their own gear that will help them triangulate issues faster.
Greater efficiencies and stronger security
- Quicker time to revenue for provisioning | Uplogix can provide an intermediate LTE network connection for remote provisioning access and limited initial customer traffic. This reduces the experience level needed for technicians on customer premises, allowing the most experienced people to be where they are needed most—virtually. Stage devices onsite with faster device configuration and the ability to integrate onsite service level metrics.
- Tighter security even when the network is down | Changes made during network outages, whether for recovery or malicious purposes, are often difficult to track. Uplogix records all device interactions (both human input and device response) when the network is up, or down, allowing for faster resolution.
- Reduced OPEX through automation | Uplogix takes care of initial run book recovery steps, freeing admins to focus on bigger challenges. Centralized management tools benefit from a reliable network connection and onsite monitoring. Ongoing management tasks like upgrades and configuration changes benefit from the Uplogix automated “safety net” for mass updates and reliable remote config management.
- Common management platform for heterogeneous gear | Uplogix manages gear over the console port, a common base-level connection that operates independently of the network. This also means that Uplogix can manage a wide range of networking and communications gear, allowing MSPs to deliver gear that the customers want.
- Robust, locally-collected analytics | Since Uplogix sits in the rack with the network infrastructure, more complete device data can be collected and fed to NOC tools (even when the network is down), and service levels can be measured from the customer’s perspective for documenting SLAs and triangulating problems.
Local Management has some clear benefits for managed service providers who use Uplogix to deploy gear faster, manage it better, and control costs while hitting their SLAs.
