MSP platforms

[sapsford]

hi all, i am currently trialing different MSP solutions.

does anyone have an opinion on what they like or are using?

also do they intergrate with CommitCRM easliy?

i am trialing Kaseya and N-Able at the moment

i found the people at Level Platforms hard to talk to where N-Able have been very accessible

Also interested to know if people are using hosted or running it on their own server etc

thank u

steve

[ajgyomber]

Re: MSP platforms

I am using the hosted version. I have learned that the hosted and purchased versions are considerably different. The two biggies being able to use the SDK to create your own service templates and the other being nCompass reporting application.

I believe 6.7 will allow you to utilize the "External ID" field in the hosted version which will allow you to correctly send alerts t the appropriate client in CommitCRM CRM.

[FunctionOne]

Re: MSP platforms

We've tried them all - you should look at Zenith. We stopped looking after we found that.
http://www.zenithinfotech.com/

Happy to answer questions or connect you with our account rep.

[wtbservices]

Re: MSP platforms

We went through several platforms trying each one out and we also decided on Zenith InfoTech. N-Able, Kaseya and LPI all have their good points but Zenith was a better fit for us. One thing that was important for us was the time to get running on it. With Zenith you can get set up today and be running tomorrow.

Here are the pros/cons I have with Zenith, maybe it will help someone out.
- Patch management is mostly a set it and forget it affair. If for some reason a system wont take a patch they provide tools and support to help get it straightened out. All patches are vetted by their patch team before they are released for install.
- Remote control of client computers is really good. Each machine you set up gets LogMeIn IT Reach, this is a great tool in and of itself. You can also set up a branded portal and grant the end users access to their computers via LogMeIn.
- Server alerting is pretty good. When a monitored process on a server goes down or throws an error I usually have a phone call and an email within 10 minutes. The NOC will also frequently suggest possible causes and remedies for whatever has occurred.
- Reporting is somewhat good. The data that they report in the monthly reports is very well chosen but the layout is not very customizable. This leads to a good bit of cut and paste before sending it to clients. (I believe they are working on this.)
- Scripting is just bad. All they have is the ability to schedule a machine to download and execute an executable and you have to give it a wide time window for when it should be performed.
- Antispyware tools are good. It runs CounterSpy and Spybot nightly and reports the results.
- Antivirus was good, but now it is bad. Until recently every machine you had on the service got a license for AVG. In November they stopped using AVG and switched to BitDefender. This changeover hasn't gone very smoothly and the user forums are reporting many problems and complaints.
- A/V monitoring is mediocre. It can detect common antivirus software and determine if it is updated but it can't show you whether or not scans have been run or report on any virus detections.
- Device monitoring is adequate. Common devices like HP printers and Cisco gear are well supported. Anything that can speak SNMP can be monitored. If nothing else, it can at least ping test a device.
- System reporting is good. You can get a very comprehensive view of a systems hardware and software straight from the portal. You can also generate change reports to detect changes over time.
- The portals UI needs a little work. Some parts are good, some need some usability enhancements.
- Workstation problems don't generate email alerts. As an example, we had a workstation that was throwing SMART errors on the hard drive. The agent detected the errors and it showed up in the portal as being in an error state. The problem is that we have to manually open each site and look.

[AN-Tech]

Re: MSP platforms

wtbservice,

Thanks for such a detailed review of your thoughts on Zenith. I am still in the process of figuring out which MSP to go with. Can you offer some info on how well you are integrating Zenith withCommitCRM.

[wtbservices]

Re: MSP platforms

Actually we don't do any integration. When a server has a problem we will typically get a phone call from the NOC before we get the email. Whoever takes the call opens a ticket inCommitCRM. That isn't such a hard thing since everyone knows that everything you work on has to have a ticket associated with it (even our internal stuff). A quick look at Zenith's dashboard tells us if we have any alerts that haven't been acknowledged and we are in Zenith's portal several times a day.

We don't use the email connector and from what I have read about it I don't think you can with Zenith. The connector tries to determine the correct account from information in the subject line of the email and Zenith puts that info inside the email body.

[AN-Tech]

Re: MSP platforms

This is why I wish there was a way to have the email connector scan the body of the email. We have a lot of customers who's backup software only shows the details in the body as well. So we have to manually read each email from these to look for a completed status and manually create a ticket if there is an issue. It's a pain to have to open and reach every one of these emails to see if they need to be responded to.

It's kind of sad that I may need to see if there is another program that I can have pre-process email so the email connector can work for us.

[vsouthmayd]

Re: MSP platforms

ascendnet,

Look at email2db. I believe it has the features you are looking for.

Vernon Southmayd
Creative Computing.
http://creativenetcare.com

[AN-Tech]

Re: MSP platforms

vsouthmayd,

Thanks for the tip, I will check it out. I just wish it could be handled directly by the email connector though. It leaves one more thing that could go wrong if I have to add another program to the mix.

[Support Team]

Re: MSP platforms

Hi guys, thank you for you detailed input and suggestions on this thread. I believe that email2db should work well.

Anyway, we would actually want to take this opportunity and ask you to send us some sample emails which represent a typical incoming email which requires an email body processing, such as mentioned here (any other real-life samples are more than welcome).

If you have a chance, please send us any samples you have, and make sure to send it as an email attachment, rather than just forward it, so we will have the exact original email structure to look at.

Thanks,

Ethan

[FunctionOne]

Re: MSP platforms

I'd agree with the majority of wtbservices thoughts on Zenith's pros and cons.

The biggest con for us is the lacking desktop capabilities. We'd like to see the ability to monitor for common error log events like the classic NTFS errors which point to potential disk failure. As it stands we often don't see these until we're logging in to remediate another issue and spot it in the LogMeIn dashboard.

Regarding the anti-virus situation - I concur - they had included AVG and the recent move to Bit-Defender is in my, and many partners opinion, a bad one.

That said, Zenith did drop the price per desktop agent just prior to dumping AVG. We've signed up as an AVG Reseller and the cost per desktop for us to pay for and provide AVG for our clients turns out to be less than the savings Zenith gave us by dropping the per desktop price. Problem solved.

As for using CommitCRM with Zenith we use the Email Connector to catch incoming alerts from Zenith but the problem is there is no continuity between email subject titles sent by the Zenith platform. Issue on servers include the Site Name in the subject line which makes it easy to define a filter for auto ticket creation. But at the desktop you don't get the SiteName in the subject line - you get the Asset Name only so it is pretty much impossible to get this to work.

We primarily use the Email Connector to turn emails into tickets. We've defined each of our clients Site Code and we forward emails into CommitCRM and manually add the Site Code to the subject line and have the filter set to use this code to map the ticket to the appropriate account. This works pretty flawlessly.