If you’re an MSP providing IT services for desktop environments where basic up/down server monitoring will do, an RMM tool is more than adequate. But for MSPs offering fixed-fee monthly service packages, or cloud services, important advantages can be gained by complementing an RMM tool with an advanced performance monitoring solution.
Monitoring customers on fixed-fee contracts
When you offer an “all you can eat” package where you are on the hook for anything that breaks in your customer’s infrastructure, the ability to be proactive and fix small problems before they become big problems becomes paramount.
An advanced performance monitoring solution will monitor your customer’s high-end systems (network, servers, virtualization, storage, etc…) in such depth that you will know about problems well before your customer. And when there is an issue, these tools provide historical trending graphs that enable your front line help desk technicians to solve many problems without having to bring in the help of more costly engineers.
In addition to helping you solve problems quicker, and reducing your cost to deliver services, these trending graphs help identify upsell opportunities. It makes it a lot easier to sell your clients new gear when you’re showing them a graph that they’re about to run out of capacity.
Monitoring private clouds
As you move hundreds, and eventually thousands of people onto your private cloud, your reputation rides on the performance and stability of your infrastructure. Every hiccup has the potential to flood your help desk with calls from frustrated customers.
To minimize performance degradation, MSPs need in-depth visibility into a core group of technology vendors (i.e. VMware, NetApp, Citrix, Cisco…) that RMM tools weren’t specifically designed to monitor.
This is where advanced performance monitoring can be a big help. It provides MSPs with instant visibility into their critical infrastructure and applications, enabling engineers to identify and resolve issues faster. This translates into decreased labor costs and increased customer loyalty, which in today’s ultra-competitive environment is something that’s hard to put on price on.
To learn more about how MSPs are complementing their RMM tool with advanced performance monitoring, read a case study, or take a test drive of our live MSP demo environment.