New features help MSPs deliver better customer experience by improving help desk performance, enhancing cloud security offerings and accelerating Microsoft Teams adoption
SkyKick, a global provider of cloud automation and management software for information technology services providers (ITSPs), today announced major upgrades to its Cloud Manager product that will further help ITSPs navigate the increasingly complex world of SMB cloud management. This Cloud Manager release brings significant automation capabilities to Cloud Command, Security, and Teams product areas to help ITSPs better manage and secure cloud customers.
“These upgrades deliver enhanced help desk automation, unlock new cloud security scenarios and provide out of the box capabilities to deploy, secure and support Teams, so that ITSPs can both serve customers better and grow revenues.”
As SMBs continue to rapidly adopt and use SaaS applications, ITSPs worldwide will spend an estimated 500 million labor hours on IT administration annually. A SkyKick study of over 500 ITSPs found that for MSPs with 3 to 5 employees, routine help desk tasks can consume more than 2000 hours each year. With 46% of tickets also being escalated to senior engineers, ITSPs are increasingly placing high priority on improving help desk performance and are adopting automation to manage cloud administration tasks and workflows more efficiently.
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“When the cloud emerged just over a decade ago, the IT Service Provider landscape changed forever,” said SkyKick Co-CEO Todd Schwartz. “Now, with the proliferation of SaaS and cloud, we’re entering the age of cloud management for ITSPs, and this intensifies the need for automation to help support customers, secure cloud infrastructure, and improve operational efficiency.”
As SMBs continue their rapid adoption of cloud and remote work solutions, cloud-based communication solutions are increasingly in demand. Microsoft Teams has seen over 400% growth in users, with IT partners able to access significant margins for seats under management, yet many ITSPs shy away from managing teams and other applications because of concerns about technical and business readiness.
Cloud Manager automation will help ITSPs more effectively manage this opportunity through more repeatable deployments, and by empowering Help Desk staff with tools to assess activity and drive Teams adoption.
Finally, ITSPs face thorny cloud security scenarios for themselves and their customers, particularly with managing securely and effectively across multiple cloud services.
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91% of SMBs customers report that they would use an ITSP if it offered the right security solutions, yet while ITSPs understand that the opportunity to address growing security needs is massive, they are also finding that implementing effective and scalable programs is no simple exercise.
IT Partners need solutions that help them to strengthen Microsoft 365 security and that use automation to achieve standardization, facilitate regular security assessments and enable the ability to monitor and remediate security gaps.
“We built Cloud Manager to help ITSPs address the operational complexities of supporting their customers across SaaS products and cloud platforms, while also maintaining margins and delivering optimized operations,” said SkyKick Co-CEO Evan Richman. “These upgrades deliver enhanced help desk automation, unlock new cloud security scenarios and provide out of the box capabilities to deploy, secure and support Teams, so that ITSPs can both serve customers better and grow revenues.”
This release focuses on 4 major upgrades for help desk automation, cloud security and management of cross-cloud applications:
Collections – Managing more and more customers in the cloud means that ITSPs must execute thousands of tasks to effectively administer and manage cloud customers. Out of the box collections allow ITSPs to easily discover, share, and use automation that is organized in ways that map to how their business works. ITSPs can also customize pre-populated collections or create their own to map to their unique workflows.
Monitoring and Scheduling – Partners can schedule any task for the future and monitor important customer information like MFA status, mailbox statistics, Microsoft 365 user reports, and more. These upgrades enable powerful security scenarios for SMB customers.
Advanced Permissions and Sharing – Role-based access to the product so that the entire help desk can securely use automation in a way that is tailored to their daily work and responsibilities. These enhancements allow partners to better manage non-secure password sharing and other activities that reduce security compliance.
Accelerating Microsoft Teams Adoption – New features will help ITSPs capitalize on the explosive growth of remote work and Microsoft Teams with automation that enables repeatable customer deployments. Partners will be able to configure Microsoft 365 tenant and teams, create teams from existing groups, protect teams with data-loss-prevention and easily implement enhanced Teams security.
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