To say that managing the escalating complexity and operating costs of IT departments at growing community banks while ensuring business continuity for mission-critical applications is difficult is an understatement. But, it can be done and done effectively. Here’s how.

The combination of virtualization with a robust remote bank IT security solution can result in a reduced IT footprint, a simplified IT infrastructure and an improvement in the overall business continuity of the bank’s IT systems. Virtualization can also reduce IT costs for new hardware and software, reduce operating costs for electricity, cooling, and space and secure business continuity with real-time disaster recovery.

Though virtualization provides significant operational benefits, it changes the rules of the game. Virtualization management must address how changes or events within the bank IT security environment impact it’s computing environment. Virtualization creates an invisible, dynamic network infrastructure which results in new challenges such as resource allocation and data protection issues that have bank IT management implications. This is why it’s necessary to leverage IT automation tools to manage the virtual infrastructure and enforce strict banking business and IT policies.

Centralizing IT management for banks gives administrators a holistic view of all resources, arming them with the visibility to efficiently distribute resources as demand ebbs and flows. A bank IT security solution like Kaseya makes virtualization and cloud computing manageable by:

• Enabling internal and FDIC regulatory compliance
• Increasing the availability and reliability of banking systems and data
• Improving the productivity of business staff in bank branches
• Centralizing remote management and automating basic administrative tasks
• Tracking inventory across branches giving IT staff a clearer picture of all assets
• Providing reliable tools to proactively plug potential security holes

Are you looking to protect, comply and reduce costs? Learn more about how Kaseya is a perfect solution for bank IT security problems.

Even just one hour of downtime can cost a retailer thousands of dollars in lost sales per store. With dozens of stores scattered across a region, application availability directly affects whether a retailer meets or exceeds its revenue goals. A remote retail IT management solution drastically reduces downtime, enabling IT staff to ensure business continuity which results in a financially-healthy organization.

Retail chain IT administrators, working in a manual environment, spend the majority of their time fielding calls and reading emails from salespeople out in the field who are having issues accessing their point of sale application. The lack of a centralized repository of information causes repetitive issues to recur, forcing administrators to devise stop-gap solutions instead of analyzing those repetitive issues and developing long-term solutions. It becomes impossible to keep up with all the requests coming in from the field via various channels. A central help desk solution helps retail IT administrators prioritize and track issues so that they can efficiently resolve them according to importance.

An automated and remote retail IT management solution gives retail chain administrators a single platform in which to identify, prioritize, track, resolve and report help desk issues. By integrating ticketing and help desk with proactive monitoring and maintenance, IT staffs save time and money by efficiently managing a distributed network spread over dozens of stores in multiple states… while keeping store employees armed with the tools and information they need to record sales and provide superior service to customers.

Click here to download the Top 10 Pain Points for Retail IT Management.  It’s easier than you think!

As we consider the various factors surrounding MSP pricing models, we are obligated to look at operating costs.   I assume that you have a good handle on your true operating costs.  That said, most IT service providers still live with a cost-plus markup pricing model.  In that world, profit margins are built into price.  The presumption in this world is that a price that delivers reasonable realization against standard rates will be profitable.  In our new profit margin world, realization is only one factor in determining profitability.

What you really need to know is your profit margin on a given piece of work.  And to get to this number, you need to know your costs—the cost of the hours involved in providing that service.  For a routine service, this sounds simple, but can become complicated for a larger, more complex offering since principal (or owner) pay is profit.  You must decide how to treat principal/owner compensation on a cost-per-hour basis.  Some firms just exclude that portion.  Others treat it as a “comp divided by hours” function.  Whatever your approach, it should be used consistently so that analysis of potential margins on work is understood.

Obviously, the goal in setting prices should be to drive positive margins.  But knowing your margins, even when they are negative, has value.  Then you can make informed decisions about which matters to take on, including where to invest negative margin dollars.  Too many times the amount of the investment is unknown, which means any expectation for a return is non-existent.

But before you jump in and “pick a number” trying to meet your client’s value proposition by simply going with the “easy pricing button,” it’s important to cover some fundamentals.  Doing so will pay off handsomely for your MSP practice (and for your client, too).

To set your pricing strategy, you need three critical bits of data.  Gathering the data doesn’t need to be overly complicated, but it does need to focus on three important concepts.  Today we are going to talk about the first piece of data:

Know your client’s price-sensitivity (ie, how much are they willing to pay)

Tell me if you’ve heard this before.  “Mobile is good.  We need to be in mobile.  Let’s offer mobile as a service.  I’m sure all our clients want it.”  But do you assume all your customers will find value in the same way?  They don’t.  And won’t.

Understanding that most clients want to save some money, the real trick is gaining an understanding of what they actually do – and do not – value in a given piece of IT services work.  Some clients place a high value on experienced technicians and have, therefore, no issues with the higher rates of some MSPs.  Other clients prefer that their work be pushed down to lower cost resources whenever possible.   Fee expectations are different among clients based on the work performed.  Or to be performed.

The only effective way to understand a client’s value priorities is to have a direct conversation with them.  Are they in a cash flow situation?  Are they under pressure from the banks – or funding partners – about overall IT costs?  Are their business people pressuring them for budget certainty on certain work?  These and many other situations will drive both the type of pricing and the right value-to-price number.

What do you think?  Is value pricing overrated or just smoke and mirrors? Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 coming soon.

Today’s more customer-focused retailing approach is creating an explosion of information which drives tremendous growth in storage needs every year. Yet retail IT operating budgets, as a percentage of revenue, are among the lowest of any industry. The need to do more with less is a continuous requirement in retail IT. In order to do more with less, you must deliver a reliable, scalable foundation for a remote environment that is designed to deliver dependable and security-rich operations with centralized management of enterprise technologies across networks with multiple geographically-dispersed locations and thousands of devices.

Remote systems monitoring  can automatically flag systems for changes, disk capacity, protection violations, performance and downtime. Retail IT administrators can easily monitor event logs from a centralized management console to better analyze and fix recurring issues. Administrators can also identify potential problems before they become real problems, thus avoiding downtime.

Systems monitoring and alerts features can save time by making it easier to diagnose and fix network and system issues, as unresolved and recurring problems often result in unnecessary repairs and equipment upgrades. Remote monitoring eliminates the need to interrupt store personnel while they’re trying to keep shelves stocked, assist shoppers and efficiently complete transactions.

Retail IT administrators should not be thought of as interruptions and annoyances, but rather as valuable resources who can help turn information into insight, deliver better quality services more quickly, drive efficiency and manage risk.

Learn how Kaseya is a perfect solution for retail IT problems.  It’s easier than you think!

It’s difficult for community banks, which typically have limited IT administration resources, to keep their systems up to date and running smoothly in one location. When a community bank has multiple locations, an IT manager can spend more time driving between branches than actually working on the systems.

That’s why banking IT software that enables remote management of systems is so beneficial for community banks. Remote management software lets an IT manager monitor, maintain and troubleshoot all the servers and workstations on a bank’s network. That means updating software and installing patches without having to physically visit each location. It also means remotely diagnosing problems and often fixing them in minutes instead of days. The more robust remote systems management solutions also have reporting capabilities that come in handy when it’s time to demonstrate regulatory compliance to an IT auditor.

In selecting a remote banking IT solution, banks should review the software’s performance record. Check that its patch management functionality is effective and consistent. Choose a vendor that is familiar with the banking industry and understands its compliance challenges.

Banks are in a perfect storm of having to do more, do it better and do it with less. Software patches can be especially problematic because they sometimes disrupt a community bank’s core processing applications. That’s why it’s advisable to have a test group made up of several devices across branches that tests patches before rolling them out. Remember that Microsoft, for example, doesn’t test its patches for a bank’s teller or loan systems.

As the cost of technology continues to decrease, and stricter, more complex banking regulations are put into place, automated remote banking IT solutions are becoming a necessary part of community banks’ IT infrastructure.

Now banking IT administrators can reap the benefits of using cost-effective, integrated, automated bank systems technology. Listen to our webinar, “5 Strategies for Managing Remote Finance IT Systems from Your Office” for tips on how to achieve better IT management for your financial institution!

How you deal with this disruption is critical.  It can change the entire outcome for better or for worse. Consider how automating the r0utine tasks will allow you to free up your time to focus on the exceptions; the one-offs; the unexpected.

If you’re spending time checking backup status on 300 servers is that really the best use of your time?  Why not just deal with the exceptions?  Leverage a framework that helps you deal directly and quickly with the exceptions on the 4 servers that had backup issues rather than spending time confirming for all 300.

Consider today what you are forced to do with exceptions and imagine a better more simple and more effective systems management methodology.

 ps – this video was originally viewed on michaelhyatt.com

• A single, web-based interface to deploy all hardware and software inventory and IT asset management  processes
• Asset data audit, tracking
• Tracking of all hardware and software assets within a single database
• Asset tracking throughout the lifecycle including move, add, change and delete (MACD) activities
• Online, always accessible vendor, service and maintenance contracts ensuring accurate tracking of financial and service impacts of asset changes
• Software metering functionality providing accurate monitoring of application usage, and facilitating license harvesting and compliance
• Details on discovered software applications including software category and threat level

This IT asset management software solution would deliver a comprehensive up-to-date network inventory whenever you desired. You could view and manage the network efficiently from anywhere at any time. You could gain access to any computer or server, and troubleshoot any issue from your office. You’d know, at any time, exactly what software was running on the system, when the system was installed, when the license expires, its OS version, the latest security update installed, how much memory or capacity it had and so forth… down to the smallest detail.

Learn more about how IT asset management software can help save your IT organization time, money and headaches. Download this free whitepaper on the “Top 10 IT Systems Management Pain Points ” and the solutions to them to learn more.

With the Mail QOS monitor in Kasey Network Monitor you can monitor delivery times and availability, collect statistics, get alarm notifications and produce weekly, monthly or yearly trending reports.

The monitor works by sending an e-mail via an outgoing SMTP server and after a wait picking it up on a POP server.

When picking it up, KNM is able to measure the time it took for the e-mail to travel from KNM and land in the mail box at the POP server.

The time is encoded into the e-mail sent and can thus be derived by KNM when it picks it up from the POP server, that way KNM do not have to continuously poll the server but can wait until its sure the e-mail have arrived.

The only limitation of the monitor is that it requires one exclusive e-mail account.

In addition to measuring roundtrip times, the monitor also tests connection time to both SMTP and POP servers. Since at least the POP server will require a logon, this logon process will also indicate responsiveness of other backoffice systems.

The following metrics are stored:

• Roundtrip time
• SMTP send time
• POP login time
• POP receive time

How to configure the Mail QOS monitor

This short guide assumes that you are familiar with KNM and terms used in the program.

1. Create an object that points to the POP server that is going to be used in the test
2. Open the object information page and click “New monitor”
3. Expand Web and e-mail monitors and select the Mail QOS monitor
4. Enter the maximum allowed e-mail round trip
5. Enter the interval which the monitor will check for the e-mail to arrive , this value should be less than the above value so the total wait time is minimized.
6. Configure SMTP server address and port. Remember to check the SSL checkbox if the SMTP server uses a secure connection. Authentication is usally optional for internal e-mail servers, external e-mail servers requires authentication.
7. The from address field should be a address that is accepted by the SMTP server
8. Configure the POP  server port and remember to check the SSL flag if the connection is to be secure. Select an account to use to logon.
9. Enter the e-mail address of the POP account to be checked, this e-mail address will be used in the “To:” field of the e-mail.
10. Save the monitor.

Note that we did not change any common monitor parameters in this example, that will make the monitor use the default action list and test time.

Making use of the data

When testing the Mail QOS monitor saves data about roudtrip time and SMTP/POP server performance, this data can later be used in reports to analyze trends and look for patterns when problem arise.

Reports can be generated either by report templates, report templates are built by specifying what to display in the reports and later at generation they are populated with the selected monitors or you can use customized reports. Customized reports are custom made reports for a particular set of monitors.

All reports can be e-mailed on schedule or exported to an FTP server or network connected share.

Reference:

Documentation: http://help.kaseya.com/WebHelp/EN/KNM/4000000/8871.htm

5 Free tools: http://www.kaseya.com/solutions/free-tools.aspx