Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions are the foundation upon which successful MSP businesses are built.
But all too often MSPs struggle with their RMMs, and devote a full-time admin just to run the darn thing. Complexity is just one thing holding back optimum exploitation of RMM solutions. Other drawbacks of some RMM tools are an inability to scale, less than robust automation, and weak reporting.
The quality of your RMM is critical as it is the main way MSPs produce revenue. That’s why the idea of a next-generation RMM is so important. So what is a next gen RMM? It is one that eliminates the downsides of today’s generation of solutions. Not only that, a next-generation RMM vendor should never stop innovating — always looking for new features that make MSPs’ clients lives easier and their IT more productive.
Did you know that last year, some 59% of managed offerings from MSPs were driven by an RMM, and that revenue grew some 41% year over year since 2011? This shows the importance of endpoint management. The next-generation RMM will drive the next generation of endpoint management services.
Defining a Next-Generation RMM
- Scale. MSPs are always looking for more and bigger clients. That means their RMM has to scale to handle all these endpoints. When MSPs were first transitioning from break/fix, they sometimes had had trouble scaling to more than 500 endpoints. Now, small MSPs can ramp up to 500 new endpoints in short order. Today’s MSPs need to go well beyond this, and in many cases they must serve thousands of endpoints without servers crashing or the network slowing to a crawl. Unlike niche RMMs or first-generation RMM tools, the next-generation RMM can scale quickly without the reliability and performance problems of the past.
With the next-generation RMM, MSPs can add servers with little cost due to scalability and superior automation, and need not fear performance problems that threaten service levels. And because the RMM is already next-generation, you don’t have to worry about outgrowing its scale or features, and have to endure the cost and hassle of moving to a different RMM.
- Serious automation. The whole idea of an RMM should be about automation. But there are different levels of automation and of difficulty in setting up and performing automated duties. The higher the level of automation sophistication and the easier it is to manage, the more endpoints each technician can effectively manage.
With first-generation RMM tools there is only low level scripting and automation abilities. A next-generation RMM solution, on the other hand, lets MSPs easily and quickly build a large volume of automation procedures, automation scripts, templates, and reports. Meanwhile the scripting should be state-of-the-art, powerful, flexible and easy to use.
- Top technician experience, with fast and modern remote control. MSP techs spend most of their day staring at an RMM console. The efficiency of each technician determines the profitability of MSP services. The remote control must be fast, and perform at high speed from wherever the technician happens to – even over a high-latency network.
- Dynamic analytics and reporting. Old-style first-generation RMMs only had static reports, which was fine when the MSP world wasn’t as dynamic as it is today. In this new environment, MSPs need to create and revise reports quickly. And easily. These reports also help MSPs define their value, often unseen, to the client.
- Rich mobile interface. Technicians often work more hours than they like, and even a short lunch break can leave them far behind. The answer is a full-featured mobile RMM native client. This way all key functions can be performed properly, when they need to be performed. Beyond that, the tech experience needs to be intuitive so that techs spend less time learning to use the solution, and more time helping customers.
Having scale and next-generation features makes your MSP operation more valuable. If it is ever for sale it will fetch a far higher price because it can deliver new generation services at a low cost.
Kaseya VSA 9.3 is the Next-Generation RMM
Kaseya VSA 9.3, released this spring, is the next-generation RMM. One critical element is Kaseya Live Connect. The Live Connect module delivers immediate, comprehensive, and real-time visibility into every aspect of an endpoint such as CPU utilization, application processes, services, disk utilization, activity metrics and service tickets-without interrupting the end user’s system.
“With these enhancements, which have been developed based on customer feedback, Live Connect has leapfrogged competition to deliver the best technician experience on the market today,” said Mike Puglia, chief product officer, Kaseya. “Competitive offerings don’t have the modern, clean intuitive interface of Live Connect. But, more importantly, they don’t have the connect speed, the advanced real-time monitoring interface, the remote control capabilities and the inherent reliability of Live Connect for VSA 9.3.” Here are more VSA 9.3 advantages.
VSA 9.3 Offers the Most Productive Technician Experience
VSA 9.3 delivers the industry’s fastest, most reliable and functionally complete remote monitoring and management to reimagine the technician experience through:
- Real Time Visibility: Live Connect module delivers immediate, comprehensive, and real-time visibility into every aspect of an endpoint such as CPU utilization, application processes, services, disk utilization, activity metrics and service tickets-without interrupting the end user’s system.
- Fast Remote Control: VSA’s remote control is accessible within Live Connect to enable rapid resolution of complex device problems by technicians.
- Reduced Site Visits: New Kaseya VSA and Intel vPro integration enables non-responsive PCs or kiosks to be repaired remotely without the cost or delays associated with a site visit.
- Extensible Automation: Technicians can leverage an extensible library of automated procedures to address common issues, such as rebooting, disk cleanup, service restarts, or clearing registry problems.
- Improved Technician Multi-tasking and Efficiency: Technicians can simultaneously monitor multiple devices, quickly toggle between remote sessions, and quickly zero-in to resolve issues.
Policy-Driven Endpoint Security
VSA 9.3 includes advanced security capabilities and automation including:
- Security Automation: Policy-driven “best practice” automation templates based on Kaseya’s experience working with thousands of customers, ensures that all end points are secure and are consistently updated to provide the highest threat protection.
- Selectable Security Posture Levels: Customers can now quickly select between pre-built levels of security monitoring to automatically enable the appropriate level of scanning and remediation for workstations or servers that can be applied to groups guaranteeing compliance with internal or industry standards.
Improved Platform Scalability & Extensibility
VSA is engineered to meet the demands of today’s disparate networks through:
- Peer-to-Peer: New peer-to-peer software deployment technology provides a new approach to distributing software applications and updates on a massive scale.
- Improved Scalability: Kaseya VSA 9.3 has benchmarked improved performance by up to 30 percent due to database performance, refactoring the server architecture and advanced performance engineering.
- Automation Exchange: New Automation Exchange puts the power of the community to work by providing a central “clearing house” to foster the easy exchange of automation processes, scripts, reports, integrations and other customization.
MSPs Already Reaping Rewards
Some MSPs are already taking full advantage of Kaseya’s next-generation RMM. “Kaseya’s VSA 9.3 was clearly developed with the technician experience in mind,” says Oscar Romero, lead systems engineer for Dataprise. “Kaseya continues to develop its products based on the feedback from their user-base and this latest version is another example. The ‘rebirth’ of managed security management and the redesigned Live Connect are two powerful technical forces which will empower our engineers to not only be more efficient but, also to provide first-class service delivery to our clients.”
