Founded in 2003, BizCom Global is based in Raleigh, N.C. and has 17 employees. In 2018, BizCom shifted from primarily hosting Microsoft Exchange to focusing on becoming a managed service provider (MSP).
Since then, it has developed backup services and moved into endpoint security and management.
The challenge
When BizCom began its MSP journey, the company used 11 different applications to back up client data. The approach was risky and left some areas of client protection vulnerable, says BizCom CEO Mark Wiener.
“We were left with risks in a lot of places,” Wiener says. “Things got missed. We didn’t always have the coverage we should have had. A narrow slice of something we thought was being covered wasn’t being covered at all.”
On top of that, BizCom had to dedicate significant resources to providing backup services. And with 11 systems, security alerts — legitimate and otherwise — were constant.
“Each backup system was assigned to a different person,” Wiener says. “There was too much need for much human intervention. Alert fatigue was a major problem.”
The solution
BizCom needed remote monitoring and management (RMM) capabilities to serve a growing client base and larger organizations.
“If you’re managing more than a handful of users, you need some RMM functionality,” Wiener says. “We needed to remote into a machine, do some patching and drive vulnerable management components. We needed to see what was happening and where it was coming from so we could keep everything up to date.”
Wiener and his staff turned to Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud and functionality that is now part of Acronis RMM.
“We’ve been using some of the things that are now in the RMM solution,” he says. As those pieces came out, we used them.”
The result
Simply put, BizCom can do more with less using Acronis RMM. Slimming down from 11 backup tools to one managed from a single console enabled BizCom to work more efficiently and let staffers focus on work other than maintaining backup for clients. Alert fatigue and the need to assign an employee to each backup tool ceased to be problems.
“I have one person whose primary job is to deal with Acronis alerts,” Wiener says. “It takes about 50 percent of their time. We used to have multiple people spending all day dealing with alerts.”
Every member of the BizCom staff has an Acronis certification. Managing client environments with Acronis RMM tools is far easier and more efficient than trying to wrangle multiple tools.
“Concentration of one set of knowledge on Acronis instead of needing lots of different, disparate knowledge for different tools is clearly better,” Wiener says. “Before, it was very complex. Visibility and control in one place is critical to our efficiency.”
Implementing new services without driving up costs
BizCom has begun to delve into offering endpoint detection and response (EDR) as well as extended detection and response (XDR) and managing them with Acronis RMM components. As for other functionalities, Wiener says he’s especially impressed by patch management and vulnerability assessments in Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud.
“Vulnerability assessments are incredibly valuable,” he says. “I love the failsafe patching tools. When there’s a major patch, we’ll push through Acronis and use failsafe patching as a control.”
Ultimately, Acronis RMM functionality has allowed BizCom to expand services without increasing costs. Employees can focus on growing the company, not scrambling to manage applications.
“Greater efficiency allows us to do more with less,” Wiener says. “We’re not adding costs as we’re adding services. We can add people to achieve significant growth, not just to manage things.”