Kaseya Helps CMI Get the Most from its IT Complete Infrastructure Investment

“Since the formation of CMI, we have used Kaseya as the basis of our remote monitoring and management (RMM) capability. Knowing Kaseya is the market leading supplier of RMM solutions made it our first choice and from here our relationship has grown to incorporate the full range of Kaseya IT Complete products over almost 10 years. During this time, we have seen operational efficiencies improve by more than 20 per cent and we now manage more than 5,000 endpoints,” says Ken Roulston, managing director at CMI. Founded in 2009, CMI is one of the UK’s leading IT service providers, delivering a wide range of services including infrastructure design, implementation and support. The company creates, manages, implements and supports IT systems which in turn keeps organisations effective and secure. As Roulston explains, “We have seen continued and significant growth during this relationship and Kaseya has supplied us with the products needed to ensure our customers experience the maximum uptime possible from their investment in IT infrastructure.”

The need for a fully integrated RMM system

CMI was formed after the acquisition of two firms in 2009 that didn’t have RMM systems in place. “An RMM system was a key requirement for our business and after evaluating the marketplace, we discovered that Kaseya was the market leader in this area. The VSA endpoint monitoring and management system provided everything we needed at that time, allowing us to monitor and manage devices remotely,” he says. VSA provides CMI with the unified management, comprehensive visibility, and scalable automation needed to install, deploy, and update all software. CMI used VSA in isolation for a number of years, however, began to realise that Kaseya offered a number of other solutions that could be integrated and customised to develop its VITA offering.

Kaseya IT Complete stack integration

“We have seen significant growth since 2009, taking our turnover from less than £2 million to more than £5 million and expanding our employee base from fewer than 20 staff to about 50 employees. As our company has grown, we have increased our adoption of Kaseya’s products and been able to expand our own offering to customers,” explains Roulston. CMI now uses the full stack of Kaseya IT Complete products, which includes Kaseya Unified Backup and Cloud Backup solutions that allow the backup of both servers and desktop devices to an onsite appliance and off-site location, respectively. Next was the adoption of Kaseya Antivirus which simplifies the ongoing maintenance and security of CMI’s endpoints and network, saving time and IT resources. AuthAnvil was also added to allow easy and secure single sign-on (SSO) access to any application and protects the company’s data by ensuring that only authorized people are given secure access to sensitive applications and information. Additional products integrated throughout the relationship have included NOC services for 24/7/365 support, IT Glue for real-time, seamless documentation, Kaseya Antimalware and Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM). IT Glue allows CMI to put client information at the technician’s fingertips leading to better technician load balancing, while NOC Services have enabled CMI to focus on high-value services and strategic growth, rather than mundane, repetitive tasks. “We much prefer having an integrated solution than a combination of disparate product offerings which are difficult to manage. The ease of which Kaseya’s products can be integrated and manged has resulted in us building additional components into our offering as Kaseya brings them out. This has allowed us to benefit from learning capabilities and to offer new proactive services that lead to greater monthly recurring revenues,” adds Roulston.

Ongoing support

The partnership has seen Kaseya provide both technical and sales support to CMI and the use of Kaseya products has resulted in a reduction in time spent on fixing issues, thereby reducing the need for engineers onsite as more can be done remotely. “In recent years, Kaseya has been very supportive in wanting us to succeed. Kaseya accepts that its success is tied to our success and is very proactive in helping us to deploy new solutions as well as support existing ones,” explains Roulston. “The quality of Kaseya’s products has continually improved, and we find the team at Kaseya very active in asking for our input about what we want to see in products. They do their best to incorporate these suggestions into new releases. Kaseya works with us to ensure we maximise the leverage we can get from new products we bring to the table.” Roulston adds that one of the benefits of the long-term relationship has been the access to senior management. “This access to senior decision-makers within Kaseya has strengthened our relationship. I find them to be very open as a partner. The major benefit to us is that they understand our business and are always willing to help us.”

Looking to the future

In the future Roulston says CMI will be looking to expand its use of Kaseya products even further. He explains: “We have truly embraced Kaseya’s full suite of offerings and are deploying them as they mature and are ready to be integrated. This is a move driven by their ease of integration of the products and the improved productivity that arises as a result. We are continually looking at all of Kaseya’s products and it is our intention to use as many of them as possible because of the benefit of integration.”