SolarWinds MSP’s price to partners of $4 per endpoint in Canada is designed to allow both the MSP to make money while also being less expensive for the customer than consumer-grade alternatives.
Nadia Karatsoreos, Manager of Channel Development and Enablement at SolarWinds MSP
AUSTIN – SolarWinds MSP has announced SolarWinds Backup Documents, which represents a major upgrade in the backup capabilities within the RMM offering. It was previewed last week to SolarWinds partners in a webinar, and was formally made public this week at the CompTIA ChannelCon event here.
“This isn’t really a net-new, because we have always had our own backup solution within SolarWinds MSP,” said Nadia Karatsoreos, Manager of Channel Development and Enablement at SolarWindsMSP. “SolarWinds Backup Documents allows you to be more granular on the workstation, which makes it a much more effective feature of MSP Backup.”
SolarWinds Backup was developed internally by SolarWinds MSP, and is not an OEMd product. It provides an all-in-one solution for all types of workstations, with full on-prem and cloud recovery options.
“It does two full backups a day, which is pretty much real time,” Karatsoreos said.
SolarWinds MSP is strongly emphasizing the low price of the new capability, in addition to its quality.
“This is super-affordable for the MSP, at only $4 an endpoint in Canada,” Karatsoreos added. “That’s the same cost or less than consumer grade products that some MSPs use. This price point allows the MSP to easily work SolarWinds Backup Documents into their managed services program. It’s a nice way to make it affordable for both the MSP and the customer.”
Another cost efficiency for the MSP comes from the fact that the offering is simple to use because everything is automated.
“MSPs need a program that’s simple,” Karatsoreos stated. “In the MSP world, automation is profitability. Everything in SolarWinds Backup Documents is automated. That means that the customer is capable of easily doing their own restore, without even having to deal with the MSP.”
While backup is ‘commoditized,’ Karataseos also pointed out that there are still an awful lot of customers who don’t have it, or who are using substandard product that is likely to disappoint if and when the customer ever has to do a recovery. She made reference to a 2016 study sponsored by backup vendor Retrospect. 54 per cent of small businesses back up at least daily – which means that almost half DON’T. The study found that 17 per cent back up weekly, 11 per cent back up monthly, and 17 per cent have no data protection at all.
“That’s a huge revenue opportunity for MSPs,” Karatsoreos said. “Data is really important for SMBs because it helps make organizational decisions, but putting your data on USB sticks is a lot like putting money in mattresses.”
She added that MSPs need to take this aggressively to customers to whom they are not selling data protection.
“Security is a hot topic right now, and this plays very nicely to the security model,” she added. “If the MSP offers security to their customer, this fits.”
Karatsoreos indicated that the response from their partners at ChannelCon has been extremely positive.
“The feedback has been fantastic,” she said. “Partners have been asking if it really is at that price. The affordability here is a real differentiator. I’m really eager to see how once it is marketed, the results that will come back.”
