Justin Dews talks about how to standardize your tech stack for clients.
As an MSP, standardizing your tech stack for your clients has a myriad of benefits. But instead of just listing out the reasons why MSPs should standardize their tech stack with leading vendors, we wanted to hear it directly from an MSP.
In this video, Techvera President Justin Dews discusses the reasons why they migrated to the cloud and standardized their stack with Pax8.
Video Transcript: Standardizing Your Tech Stack
What is your role at Techvera?
[Justin Dews]: So, I do some account management. I play a large role in service delivery. I do some Virtual Chief Information Officer (VCIO) work, and I also manage all of our internal vendors.
What were some of the challenges in moving to an MSP business model?
In 2015 we decided to reinvent Techvera and move away from break-fix and more into managed services. We knew that it was very important to standardize our stack of technology.
At the time, we kind of had a hodgepodge of distributors and partners that we used to consume our services for our clients. But having started working with Pax8 at that time, we found it much easier to get all of our tools from one partner, from one platform. So that made billing, support, and management just that much more easy, giving us more time to support our clients.
What are the advantages of using cloud technology?
One of the areas we’ve had a lot of luck – particularly in value to the client using cloud services – would be mobility. We focus a lot on the legal space and we found that our legal clients really like the ability to be mobile and efficient from wherever they’re working.
Having a value conversation with a client is easy when we can tell them how much more effective we’re going to make them, because they’re not chained to the office anymore. They can work from wherever they’re at. When all of their tools are cloud-based, you can be at home. You can be at the coffee shop. You can be at the office. You can be at the ball game. You can be on the beach and you’re still being effective with your time.
How did you standardize your technology stack for clients?
At Techvera, we’re in the process of moving all of our O365 clients to M365. We love the M365 seat because it has additional security layers and features. We’ve also chosen Dropsuite, Proofpoint, and IRONSCALES to layer in on top of M365. We want to give our clients the most security that we can.
We’ve also decided to standardize on a stack for all clients. So, all of our clients get these same tools. All of our technicians know how to support them. And all of our clients are protected in the same way because Pax8 provides all of these tools for us. They’ve made it easy for us to standardize on this stack.
What does your process look like when adopting new solutions or tools to your stack?
When I’m looking to add a new tool to our stack, the one thing that I’m searching for right out the gate is value. What provides value to not only our client, but also to us the MSP? Because at the end of the day, we’re responsible for supporting them.
In looking at a new tool, there’s lots of demos. There’s trialing of it in a subset of our clients. I have had quite a few phone calls, not only with representatives from Pax8, but also from the vendors themselves to pick their brains about what the tool can do. But going back, providing value to the client and providing value to us, the MSP, is one of the most important things.
What Can a Standardized Stack Do for You?
If you’re looking to increase mobility for your clients, while at the same time making sure their security needs are covered, then we hope this interview gave you some insights into what that change would look like. Pax8 can show you how to get started on standardizing your stack and become more efficient and profitable today.
