My name is rants Turley. I am doing the first podcasts for my IT Services Bartlesville company Tsi that I’ve cofounded with my colleague Matt Shank to size things for totally shank innovations. Obviously I’m the Turley from that and today we’re going to talk about what is an MSP. So looking at it up at search it, search it, channel.tech target.com it says minute service provider is a company that remotely manages a customer’s it infrastructure and or end user systems typically on a proactive basis and under a subscription model. The MSP business model differs from other types of channel companies such as value added resellers in numerous ways described below MSPs charge for the services under a number of different pricing models. Typical approaches include per device per user and all inclusive pricing. So that’s kind of the models that were uh, we implemented here at Tsi. We like to do the per device because we run into a lot of situations typically with office staff that they’ll have one device for about three or four users that maybe they’re part time staff or like a float situation, things like that. It’s a little easier for the customer to um, understand paying for one device as opposed to paying for five users that use one computer.
Only time we would look at per user pricing would obviously be for licensing purposes. Um, but there are ways to kind of circumvent that. As far as um, windows, well windows is typically used for a lot of the businesses around here. Some of them try to use Max and I’m not too familiar with the pricing on the Mac, but with windows you have the option for a per device license. But in any case we offer three different packages. Right now the top level package that we have is unlimited support with remote monitoring, which remote monitoring is another term that needs to be defined. It’s is essentially, um, that monitor the managed aspect of the ift infrastructure. That’s what it is, is we have a tool that we put on your computer. We monitor every, most of the aspects of that computers operation from performance to a disk space, CPU load memory and network usage, things like that.
So that it’s easier for us to kind of set a benchmark and also to see what the hardware is and the pcs across the board. So that helps with making, determining which pcs are the ones that have been around for 10, 15 years and not seen it. But we also have, uh, some machines that for whatever reason just do not function for certain users. So in the event of, um, consistent problems, uh, we’ve, we get IT Services Bartlesville calls that this machine is not functioning right. At a glance, we can kind of say, okay, well it looks like you’re using too many. It looks like there might be too many windows open or that disc is having the hard drives, having a hard time. So it really cuts down on the time for us to spend really digging in and trying to look at everything. Now if there’s an issue that we feel warrants that kind of attention, then obviously that’s, that’s our next step.
But it’s, it provides a very good, strong birdseye view of the performance of the machine. Another aspect of being an MSP that makes us different from typical it service providers, which most of those people are basically termed break fix and that’s kind of a MSP is kind of an evolution of break fix because a lot of uh, break fix shops really just kind of storefront computer repair shops are pushing into the MSP space by having tools that let them proactively monitor and manage, which the management piece is um, antivirus and patching for windows typically and really any kind of other, other, um, software that’s used such as Java or Citrix, things like that. We can typically at the click of a button push those patches or they might even be automated. I know patching can be one of those pain points where it, you don’t want just any patch being applied security patches more often than not.
Yes. But there are some that tend to break functionality, especially here because a lot of older software issues and that causes some of these old older softwares in circulation, which a lot of times there, and there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of vendors out there who, excuse me, who do not have the best practices in mind whenever they build their software. So it’s kind of, I’ve seen instances where the software that they office is using requires, I mean, for instance, to turn off the firewall or opening certain ports in the firewall that aren’t the safest forced that leave open their typical vectors of attack with regard to, um, malicious intent, uh, viruses and so on. But as far as getting those, I lost my train of thought can edit this part out, but it’s part of doing this early in the morning.
So we were talking about antivirus and patching, so the manage aspect of ironman. So it’s really just keeping it in the whole infrastructure healthy and protect it. Typically an onion is used to describe the party, uh, the security, it security of a business or organization. You have different layers. So, like I said, some of those older softwares can kind of take away those layers just for an added functionality. Like for instance, um, person we’re working with, I’m not gonna name names or anything, they have an older model MFD provided by another company of course. And the recently we recently swapped out a computer for them from going from windows seven to windows 10 windows seven end of life is, I believe it’s either the end of this year or sometime next year, but any case we were unable to scan. And apparently the windows 10 had a recent change. I, well not so recent, but a change that they’ve implemented is to turn off SMB version one, which is the protocol that was used by one a cry and want to cry was very, very virulent with regard to government and, um, hospital entities.
So regardless, I’m sure there were some consumer, there’s who also received one or cry. And what that did was it would just, it would get in there and encrypt everything on your machine and for trade and try to force a ransom as far as getting your data back. And I did hear about a couple of locations that ended up paying for that to regain that functionality, which is, it’s kind of, it’s goofy because within the proper it set up backups should be a f a real thing. Backing up is not saving everything to n two external hard drives. That’s, that’s kind of the idea but not as robust as you would like to think it is. But in any case, the RMM aspect is very instrumental in maintaining and proactively managing the, uh, infrastructure for any organization. And it’s, and there’s really not any reason not to install it on any, any computer that’s in your set at an organization.
It’s, it’s an nonintrusive. It doesn’t, uh, eat up a lot of resources. It’s just pulling, which is essentially running. It’s like running task manager kind of in pulling that data and sending it off to another location, which is the secure location of course. So with, um, MSPs, that’s typically the main piece that sets them apart. Now they also offer a lot of other aspects and we offer security backups as well, which kind of plays into that whole robust a backup solution. And we’re still in the process of really determining who our vendors going to be. But just looking at our site, tsi.lc, we not only do the security for infrastructure wary and the proactive maintenance, which is really that that alone will turn will cause people to build themselves an MSP managed service provider. We go a little bit further and we do for cureman.
Um, so whenever we put a proposal together we like to find the equipment and we’ll handle testing a RMA process so that with people in our area, they typically like to get not, they want to know what they’re getting, they want to know the prices. And typically that’s about it. They, they trust us on the type of functionality they need a set up and we, we will not talk you into buying like a $30,000 server if we feel that a $10,000 server work is just things like that. It’s just common sense as far as from an it perspective perspective with regard to hardware, we also do remote support, which falls under the a proactive maintenance, um, package. And we do also do standardization, which this is another big piece of being an MSP because whenever you typically an unlimited support option or they call it all you can eat, which I think that’s a ridiculous term, but some businesses like the idea of knowing how much their resources are there, how much they’re going to have to spend for it for a month.
And there being no guests, not get no guessing work as far as how, okay, how many issues are we’re going to have, how many can we really pay for it? So what we do with standardization is we come in and we standardize across the board so that monitoring is easier. So that support is easier because we’re not trying to make something work on a machine that works on one that’s a windows 10 I seven 16 Gig Ram, whatever. And trying to get that same set up to work on something that’s like a window, seven, four Gig of Ram, whatever. So it’s standardization is an MSPs best friend and it at first it there can’t, it’s hard to fathom sometimes for a business owner or manager to see the benefit with standardization, but in the long run they hopefully in the short run to they see that that it doesn’t, then it makes more sense from everybody’s perspective, from their perspective.
Especially because you think about it as, okay, we hired this company and they’re coming in and going to help us put our stuff. Why do we changing everything? Why do we have to standardize? It seems commonsensical, but it’s there. I’m sure there have been instances, we haven’t come across this, but instances where it just doesn’t make sense to the business owner or the manager. So in time that usually resolves itself and that’s, that’s a big part of being an MSP is to get your customers to be standardized so that your documentation is more relevant. That’s the biggest thing. You can hand it off to a new level one tech and they can troubleshoot this issue that took you, that may have taken, you know, a couple of hours, couple of hours to fix three months ago, but proper documentation which also plays into the standardization comes back and it justifies its cost right there.
It pays for itself because you’re not spending another few hours to a few more hours downtime for the business owner. So that’s lost productivity time standardization. Long story short circumvents that entirely. So potentially 24 seven monitoring that is an aspect of the um, remote monitoring and management. So the reports run everyday at a certain time if there’s ever, and there are checks that you can customize, like say you have a server that runs CQL and it’s been been in the past, it’s been known to stop working in, require a reboot or anything like that. So what we can do is implement checks that check for that service, the SQL servers to make sure it’s running. If it’s not, restart it and to not be too intensive on the system itself. We can set that chuck check to run maybe every five minutes. So typically if somebody’s in, I don’t think a lot of people, well now I’m sure there’ve been incidents a lot of occasions, but typically people won’t wreck, won’t see that SQL server’s been down within a five minute timeframe and that’s not coming back up.
I could be wrong, I haven’t come across it. So a backup and recovery that goes back to that security, uh, robust security solution. It’s, it’s typically security and backups. There they are two different offerings, but they just like really any of these, they work together. So if the security fails for whatever reason, if somebody clicks something they shouldn’t have or if there’s a port left open, that shouldn’t be open. Um, backup and recovery is your best friend because you typically want offsite and onsite. That’s onsite limits. The time downtime, it can get expensive, but it’s a cost too. It’s a cost benefit ratio. How much benefit would you have from being able to recover from something that takes down and you have a 10 computer office and it takes out six computers and they need to be recovered from backups. How long can you realistically wait?
Because offsite backups can take some time depending on the number on the amount of data that you’re trying to pull back. So it’s easy to skip to skimp on the cost of a backup solution, not the best idea. I mean, we’d like to think that things, things won’t happen and you know, as it, as an it professional, I can most certainly concur with that statement because I would hate for my computers to go down, but we have a backup solution and we have a recovery steps that we can go through after that happens to minimize the downtime so that, you know, we can keep working ourselves and moving. Moving on. So onsite support, that’s kind of a perennial it offering a, you have an issue, remote remote support isn’t quite cutting it. Um, typically, well I’ve seen, you know, cleaning people come in and unplug cables, like maybe they’re flashing the floor vacuuming or something, some kind of loose and it plug it back in.
It’s sometimes it’s not readily evident what the issue is. But onsite support that’s, that’s pretty much a given. Cloud services, we offer a lot of cloud services such as office three 65, um, that’s 95% cloud based. You can get desktop options, but there the cloud offerings are being pushed really hard. And this Kinda ties into backup and recovery because cloud services usually are the offsite solution and there it’s come a long way from being a buzzword about three, four years ago. Obviously technology is progressing pretty quickly. So cloud services, it’s really a catchall. Anything like web applications even I guess the most, some of the more notable ones, not necessarily business related. Our Twitter and Facebook, those are really web applications and that’s kind of on that, that’s an aspect of the cloud services because they have very varied moving pieces within just what you see.
Um, that’s like, uh, server, uh, servers that serving the files. Like for Twitter, uh, CDN, otherwise known as a content delivery network that no matter where you are, you go to Twitter, it’s going to be fast because it’s being served from multiple servers around the world, the same content. So it’s, that’s uh, kind of a cloud, uh, ESC. Um, concept. There we go. Um, a lot could be said about cloud services and a lot of it’s really just the web application aspect of mostly for businesses and some of the licensing stuff. I know I’m not a huge fan of online, like office three, six, five, I prefer the desktop versions there are just more responsive, especially in areas that do not have the best internet, but it’s still a viable option for most people. And it’s, it’s something that you want to be aware of as a business owner.
It’s, there are a lot of services out there that if you’re, you’re not going to see unless you actively go out and looking for IT Services Bartlesville. And like I said, technology is just, it’s incredible how quickly it’s changing. So cloud services, it’s, it’s like, it’s just a loaded term. So another thing we offer is vendor management. So with vendor management, we will interface with vendors that aren’t in, this bares a little bit of explanation just because we’d like to work with most of the vendors are all of the vendors, but there are certain aspects of the business that we aren’t familiar with. But if we can provide them, we will provide an it aspect of what it is you’re trying to do or what’s not working. We can kind of give the technical details if, if it’s like a web application that you can’t do a certain thing, we can, we can look at it and say, okay, well we can rule out anything on our side or the business side and we can offer suggestions as far as what needs to be looked at and we can provide any information to the vendor on your behalf.
If it’s a relationship that it’s not like a specific type of hardware that is when it comes to hardware like dentist’s office or, um, like sleep machines, things like that. We, there’s only so much we can do. Um, so that probably will be one of the relationships we don’t take on as far as vendor management goes. But if there’s any it aspects we are most certainly comfortable with being the intermediary between the business and the vendor. So mobile device support is another offering of ours. We can, uh, we can push, we can work with a mobile devices as far as, you know, if, if there’s a HIPAA compliance or some kind of encryption that needs to be done and we can mobily well we can monitor the mobile device using what’s called MDM mobile device management. And that lets us say you lose your phone.
We have MDM installed on it mainly just to push applications like work related applications that you’d like to have on your phones. Say you have a mobile, uh, salesforce or something like that. We can centrally manage those and if one of them gets lost, uh, typically there’s a couple of layers of security with when it comes to a mobile device. But if all else fails and we can’t find it, we can remotely wipe it. And that’s well insulate most businesses from any kind of negative, uh, impact typically. And then finally, network documentation. So this, it’s kind of scary how many people are unaware of what all is going on, not only what else connected to their network but what all goes on on their network. So, and this comes into play especially with certain vendors that as I mentioned before, they likes some vendors will or software or hardware will require certain specifications.
Um, as far as like network speeds or IP addresses, um, firmware, the list goes on, but we can offer documentation on your network which can actually, as far as compliance goes with Hipaa and Pci to an extent, we can look at the network and all of it in its entirety and using using various tools to um, to give us a good idea as to what changes would have to be made to limit liability with regard to compliance and especially Hipaa. That’s um, there are aspects of that that require an intimate knowledge of your network and your infrastructure. And if we do say network documentation, but that really includes all connected devices. And that coupled with our remote monitoring and managing tool, it makes for a pretty solid understanding of what we have or what you have in your environment so that policies can be created for a security in mind.
So that was just kind of going over our offerings. As an MSP managed service provider, we offer a few other things that it, we really don’t want to leave anything off the table when it comes to off what we do for businesses, we like to be that it to that mobile it department. We want to take your concepts and work them out and with their knowledge of technology, with the knowledge we have of the current technology and upcoming technology, it’s easier for us to look to, if you bring ideas or concepts or issues that like workflow related or anything like that, we can certainly look at what’s out there and see if it would be a good fit for you and you provide. I see you, the business business manager owner provides us with a list of requirements or specifications that they’d like and we can work with them in terms of determining what fits, what to look at, how to piece it together.
It the list goes on. So I thank you for listening to my rambling about being a managed service provider. Uh, we are located in Bartlesville, Oklahoma and we’re looking to support Bartlesville and surrounding areas. We’ve, we’ve got a few already and were few businesses that we’re working with and we’re excited about working with him and we’d like to continue to grow and we appreciate any kind of, uh, any kind of interaction from the business community, especially if this is the first of many podcasts. Then hopefully that now we’ve got the ball rolling. I hope that we can certainly do plenty more and I look forward to hearing back from anybody who’s interested. Our website is Tsi, not LC. I are, Facebook is facebook.com/. T. S. I. M. S. P. Twitter is at Turley Shank one word, t. U. R. L. E. Y. S. C. H. E. N. C. K. We also have an Instagram. I have to get all of these details lined up for everybody and I’ll just edit at the end of this. So thank you for listening and I hope you have a good day.