Increase MSP Margins: Develop New Remote Services with GSX Solutions

The GSX Blog

JeffPToday, I am speaking with Jean-Francois “Jeff” Piot, vice president of product management with GSX Solutions.

Hello, JF, thank you for joining us. Could you first explain what it is that GSX offers?

JF: Hello, I’m glad to be here. As experienced email and messaging systems administrators, we found that there was a profound lack of proactive server monitoring tools on the market. What was out there only provided a birds-eye view of the environment, not an in-depth diagnoses of performance issues from an end-user perspective. Moreover, in the last 10 years, servers have become increasingly virtualized, allowing administrators to dedicate critical applications to a single virtual server. However, those virtual servers and the application workloads running on them still rely heavily on the underlying physical servers. CPU and RAM availability are critical for application performance, and IT administrators need to plan for available capacity and try to predict potential resource bottlenecks before they happen.

We created GSX Monitor & Analyzer to help IT administrators ensure that they are utilizing resources and delivering the best end-user experience possible in these complex environments.

Great. Can you describe in more detail how GSX Monitor & Analyzer works?

JF: Sure. GSX Monitor & Analyzer provides proactive monitoring and reporting of enterprise collaboration environments, including Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Microsoft Lync, Microsoft SharePoint, BlackBerry Enterprise Server and IBM Applications. GSX Monitor is an agentless robot installed at the customer site. Working as an administrator, GSX Monitor automatically discovers the environment in real time and performs ongoing, automated performance tests. With this information, GSX Monitor detects potential performance issues, troubleshoots in real time and alerts IT administrators of any issues. In addition, GSX Monitor gives insight into performance from an end-user perspective, and creates alerts when end-user performance starts to decrease or becomes unacceptable. Then, the reporting solution, GSX Analyzer, gathers data from GSX Monitor and produces automated reports and forecasts on system and service performance, as well as the end-user experience, enabling service providers to justify IT costs and ensure that SLAs are being met.

Many of your customers are managed service providers. How can MSPs use GSX Monitor & Analyzer?

JF: Traditionally, managed IT service providers have been great at providing infrastructure-oriented services, and there are many existing infrastructure management tools that have enabled MSPs to provide customers with a good ROI at the system level. Yet, competition in the IT services market is fierce, and MSPs need to be able to differentiate their offerings to remain in the game. Providing application performance management is one area where there is much opportunity for MSPs to increase margins, yet there has been a lack of affordable automated tools to achieve better ROI for their customers. With GSX Monitor & Analyzer, MSPs can provide critical new services to their customers.

What are some of the benefits MSPs can get from using GSX Monitor & Analyzer?

JF: By ensuring that the end-user experience with critical and pervasive Microsoft applications is optimal, MSPs can differentiate from the competition. In addition, MSPs can meet critical SLAs and justify the level of services provided to their customers with automated and on-demand reports, as well as support migrations and build recurring revenue on Office 365.

Can you give a couple of examples of customer deployments, specifically MSP customers?

JF: Sure. One professional services customer based in Santiago, Chile-Nubison-started out providing services for BlackBerry when it was still the dominant enterprise mobility platform. Later, in order to expand its business offerings, Nubison became a Microsoft partner to bridge the gap between BlackBerry and Microsoft messaging infrastructure as customers started migrating to Microsoft. Nubison uses GSX Monitor & Analyzer to configure the monitoring, alert and escalation for performance issues to enable its customers to meet critical SLAs. Other partners, like Atidan and Focal Point Solutions uses GSX Monitor & Analyzer to ensure that their customers’ Microsoft SharePoint environments are performing at optimal levels.

Great, thanks! Any last words for service providers regarding GSX?

JF: With GSX Monitor & Analyzer, service providers can move beyond managing infrastructure and consulting on how to architect the environments which support critical Microsoft applications. MSPs can add new services to remain competitive in the industry, including: remote support for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Exchange Online and Office 365; proactive support with end-user simulation across multiple locations; assessment of hybrid on-premises and cloud environments; capacity planning and resource optimization; and, overall application availability and performance reporting. In today’s increasingly mobile and cloudy world, automated performance management tools have become a necessity for service providers to ensure that their customers can keep their employees productive, maintain service levels, and, ultimately, achieve a strong ROI.

To go further, you can request a meeting with a GSX team member.

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