MSP Backup Vendors Good The Bad And The Ugly 2024
Backup vendor experiences will be the primary topic in this article and will be the focus rather than the backup applications themselves although I will also touch on my experience on the backup applications as well.
So much is dedicated to comparing backup solutions and their specifications to each other (I am guilty of this more than most) is that we rarely sit back and look at the areas that often have the biggest impact such as quality of support and willingness of the organization to invest in development.
As a secondary goal of the main discussion, I will also discuss how documentation can help I.T services manage and maintain backups and info recovery solutions effectively as it specifically relates to this topic.
There are already websites discussing in detail subjects to do with being a service provider except they do not really discuss how documentation strategies affect those same topics. All of my articles focus on the main topic at hand and how it relates to documentation if deemed appropriate and let's face it, it's always appropriate.
An ideal documentation strategy can help you respond faster to your clients needs, allow less experienced staff handle tasks they otherwise could not and ultimately improve your profit margins while getting ahead of your competition.
Documentation is an essential aspect of the IT industry whether it be my opinion on the quality of vendors discussed here or the steps involved on how your help desk staff undertake your clients backup verification process.
Chances are that the service provider that outperforms you in areas such as client contentment are likely doing it not because they are better than you but because they have an effective documentation strategy in place.
What Defines A Good Vendor Relationship?
Batten down the hatches because after 35 years working in and around MSP vendors, I have collected a fair amount of cynicism, or is that just another word for experience?
I am going to list the channel's vendor qualities as well as the qualities we need to possess to ensure that our interaction with I.T vendors and manufacturers is the best it can be.
Trust - Sort Of
A good quality relationship with a vendor is just like any other relationship, there has to be some level of trust that can be established or it just will not work, just make sure it is not too much.
I believe that most emotional pain comes in life from unrealistic expectations and I will give an example of what I mean. I spent 7 years in the military and right from the start I inherently understood that the military is there for you under every conceivable scenario except for when you no longer have anything to offer it.
I just knew that if I ever was in a situation where my presence cost the military more than they were getting back, that I would be dropped like a stone and because of that, I was never disappointed by this behavior. I expected it.
That is the analogy I use when it comes to I.T vendors. They will act like your best friends when they want a signature for a 3 year contract on some shiny new application stack on offer, expensive steak dinners will flow however they are not your friends.
Trust and loyalty are intertwined, and sometimes hard to separate. Trusting a person just because they are friendly and make you feel like the only person in the room has more to do with being good at sales rather than being trustworthy.
Trusting too much and therefore increasing your expectations on what you believe any person will actually do for you is a recipe for hurt feelings and pain even in business.
Because IT vendors tend to have short time frames to get your trust, they will engage in behaviors that get you to feel an artificial level of trust and establish a bond early on that in many ways, has no right to exist.
Examples of this are expensive dinners usually at conferences that involve alcohol and ladies of the pole. Vendor sales teams will be extroverts that have a personality where you both want to be their friend and indeed they behave as your closest friend (Think of the popular kid in highschool)
Be realistic about the vendor relationship and do not raise your expectations to a level that will cause pain if they are broken (because they will be) They are there to do a job.
Betrayal
I consider betrayal the opposite of trust and the reason for this is because no vendor can betray you unless you had previously trusted them. The more you trust someone and the longer you have trusted them, the more painful the betrayal becomes.
IT vendors tend to have a couple of well known behaviors that are textbook versions of betrayal.
Bait and Switch
Often I.T suppliers need you early on to help them grow at the start. There will be the Gold program or action pack that draws everyone in and often has a community spirit that makes us feel like we belong.
You in return give that vendor loyalty to whichever brand is in question and as time goes on, gradually the various schemes that attracted you to them start to get modified and whittled down until they are eliminated.
It is hard initially to reconcile because you have been a loyal MSP that has spent considerable time both marketing that technology reseller and helping them grow to where they are today and you find it quite callous that they are so obviously treating you poorly because you are no longer needed anymore.
As human beings we think “How can they make it so obvious that I do not matter anymore after I helped get them where they are now”
That is the mistake of expectation and it hurts, do not take these things personally. The person you have developed the relationship with may not even have any say in revised policies.
Understand that all IT equipment providers think exactly the same way, they do not care about you or your business. You are a vehicle for them to get where they want to go. Just like the military, the moment you take away more than you put in, they will cut you loose.
If you understand this right from the start then you can modify your interaction with them so as not to get swept up in the feeling of undeserved loyalty and friendship that they absolutely manufacture so as to help them achieve their own goals.
You can still remain friendly but your decisions will no longer be clouded by the thought that Deano the account manager from Cyberdyne will think badly of you if you say no to the new XJS 3000. You will also be insulated from difficult decisions that are made that impact you.
Stealing Your MSP Clients
One day you wake up to a client saying that it's been a great ride but your technology reseller has used your information to go directly to the client to undercut you, eliminating you from the equation. No hard feelings right!
I go into more detail here on how vendors betray service providers and how to reduce the risk of some of these actions hurting your business.
This is not a small issue, many big name brands are shamelessly open about the practice. If you set your expectations to the level where you expect this behavior then it does not hurt so much when it happens and ideally you have deployed countermeasures to prevent it happening.
Communication
Vendor communication is extremely important both in developing trust between both parties and also to ensure you get the best from the vendor.
Do not have someone that is a technical guru yet you lock in a cupboard when clients visit dealing with your important vendor contacts. Remember it is a two way street where both parties need to feel they are getting something out of the relationship.
There is nothing quite as valuable as having a direct line to a person within the vendor's organization that can make things happen immediately especially if they deal in something like ruggedized computers, scientific equipment or some other type of uncommon computer hardware or vertical application.
Being fair minded and not continually having the vendor on the defensive is important. This is business, problems occur all the time, miscommunication occurs and just because you are having a bad day does not mean it is ok to unload on the vendor.
Yes you are most often in the position of power in this relationship especially if you are a larger MSP but if you abuse it, while nothing may be said, it is human nature to both try and help those we like and stick the boot in to those we dislike.
Understanding
This probably overlaps with communication a little and it can be difficult to gauge on how much understanding to have.
I have seen people who will go off like a frog in a sock without fully understanding a situation and actually get action happening faster than I would have by using my default behavior which is being understanding and patient.
It is of course a fine line. Notice those people who start every single support desk ticket they submit with the word “URGENT!!!!” with between 4 and 20 exclamation marks?
They soon get ignored which is detrimental because one day when they actually do have an urgent problem, it will not be treated as urgent unless of course they write the word urgent twice….
It is a bit like that person that does not talk all that much but when they do everyone listens versus the person that talks so much you often wonder when they are going to take a moment to breathe. They end up getting ignored and people stop listening.
Respect
This is a tricky one, I think most people get the definition of respect and kindness mixed up. Everyone is entitled to be treated with kindness and dignity and it is something that should be handed out freely and immediately.
Respect should never be given freely, it generally takes years to build up over time and can be destroyed in seconds. I do not owe anyone respect and nobody owes me respect, it is something I believe I have to earn. When people say “You need to show me respect” what they are really saying is “You need to show me kindness and dignity”
Respect for vendors should be tempered with the idea of a realistic relationship lifespan. If over years a vendor behaves honorably then a level of respect can be reached however understand that there is the individual level of respect and the company level of respect.
Individuals who are deserving of respect may end up working for vendors who will hand down a directive that is not deserving of respect. What do you do in that situation? I do not have an answer.
Vendors tend to work in cycles and just be aware that as they grow, it is highly likely there will be a part of the vendor cycle where their self interest will become evident and your respect for them will be lost.
Other Worthy Mentions
People that work for vendors are just like the rest of us, (maybe not the sales team at Kaseya) they are human beings that respond best to being treated with kindness and dignity. So making them feel as if they are part of the team in your organization is certainly a good strategy.
Be consistent with your dealings, if you say you are going to do something, do it, do not make threats about ending the vendor relationship if you are unable to or do not intend to. Everytime you say you are going to do something and do not follow through with it, you lose a little bit of respect.
Trustworthy Vendors Named
We need to actually reward vendors who over a long period of time (say 15 years) have not engaged in any deceitful behavior, no stealing clients, no cutting commissions or eliminating programs that resellers come to rely on.
While I cannot think of any that have been around that long and not been either purchased by giant equity firms or gone rogue there are some notable mentions of businesses who have so far remained loyal to their resellers and so far have not engaged in any practice that would cause a breach of trust and I list them below in no particular order. Bear in mind that the pickings are slim over a long time frame so for example Hudu were founded in 2018 but in that 5 years has had no acts of underhandedness, no accidental sales calls direct with clients and has worked hard on development of their self hosted documentation platform.
Naming Names - Untrustworthy Tech Vendors
The stand out organization that has really behaved over a long time frame in a way that is really detrimental to many managed service providers is Kaseya. Some of their products are actually very good however they have become so large now that it seems the ongoing billing issues and intentionally predatory contracts and sales tactics are now just part of the way they carry out business.
There are other companies not just the ones that offer backup solutions such as Dell, Adobe and Microsoft along with Kaseya that have at one point or another used information the service providers have given them to then go and poach their clients.
Verdict
While there are plenty of good hardware and application vendors in the technology and MSP space, there seems to be a lifecycle trajectory and you will often find that the good vendors will be at the start of their journey, the average ones will be midway through and the more difficult relationships will be with those where their products are in high demand and they are too big to fail.
It's like the ugly duckling that becomes the head cheerleader. You are with her at the start and it is great and then she suddenly starts getting more attention than she believed possible. All the promises made and things you did at the start are no longer possible, you either accept the new reality or move on.
It is to be expected that as a vendor grows, their offers to resellers and service providers will contract over time. It feels unfair, it probably is unfair but it is what it is.
Conclusion
We have a number of other cloud based backup articles either on specific backup hardware or business related topics related to backup and recovery such as this one listed below that will provide you with more detailed information on a number of related topics:
https://optimizeddocs.com/blogs/backups/backups-cloud-index
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