Cloud backup for retail.

[cyrusgod]

Hi guys and girls,

Thank you for all the feedback so far. Slowly refining our managed services and looking to target our residential customers.
Moving to Syncro for our ticketing/managed backbone soon and so setup an MSP360 (previously Cloudberry) account with Amazon S3 as our storage provider.. spent half a day getting the basics setup there and watching tutorial videos.

I am just wondering how people manage to have success with these offerings when residential (and small business) customers will reference everything to the likes of Office 365 (sorry... Microsoft 365!) that includes 1tb of cloud storage for £5.99 and a full blown office suite they love! I was looking at offering bare-metal backups solutions for our most popular 240GB and 500GB SSD system sizes and the MSP360 license and S3 storage alone is around £9/£14. Try to make a few pounds and customers are looking at £12/17 plus the dreaded 20% VAT!!

Start adding the underlying headaches to manage this when things go wrong and responsibility involved and I feel like pointing them to MS 365 and charging for the installation.. or better yet getting into reselling that is the way to go?

Would love to know what you all think?

 

[alexsmith2709]

From my limited research in to cloud backups/storage, the only way to make money and compete is to oversell. I had a conversation with livedrive after signing up for a reseller account about how i couldnt compete with them direct or with PC World/Currys (who they supply). This was their response:

The common approach to running a business that offers unlimited backup storage is the “breakage model” this model works on the basis of “the majority pay for the few”. Meaning the vast majority of customers’ backup a small amount of data so will be the accounts providing the most profit and they pay for the smaller volume of customers who use more backup space.

With the option to white label or even just co-brand there isnt really any room to make money so i gave up looking as it didnt seem worth it, but it is still something i would like to offer at some point.

 

[cyrusgod]

May need to look at LiveDrive as an option vs MSP360. It's early days...

 

[Markverhyden]

I'd thoroughly test everything first to make sure the solutions function as advertised. Still have concerns about 3rd party cloud based bare metal backups as a primary backup. The bigger the pipe the more it costs so restores could easily take days with the corresponding risk of non-recoverable interruptions.

Personally I use iDrive. The have two programs for IT service companies. One is you can be a reseller, marking up and selling directly. The other is partnering where one gets a quarterly residual for each one sold.

 

[cyrusgod]

I'd thoroughly test everything first to make sure the solutions function as advertised. Still have concerns about 3rd party cloud based bare metal backups as a primary backup. The bigger the pipe the more it costs so restores could easily take days with the corresponding risk of non-recoverable interruptions.

Personally I use iDrive. The have two programs for IT service companies. One is you can be a reseller, marking up and selling directly. The other is partnering where one gets a quarterly residual for each one sold.

Thank you, I will have a look at iDrive. We were considering Livedrive but there seems to be quite a push to pay upfront with no trial; which at this time... is a little risky!

 

[HCHTech]

There isn't a "slam-dunk" answer to this, as far as I can tell. If you white-label some vendor's product, then you have two competing facts:

1. The customer sees it as YOUR product. YOU are in charge of success or failure, but....
2. It isn't your product, it is the vendor's, the success of which you have at best, less than full control over, and more commonly, little or no control over.

If you instead resell a product, as long as you are very clear with your clients that this is the VENDOR's solution you are providing, then you solve the issue with number 2, above.....mostly. But, you are then left with only a minor spiff with which to make a profit.

So, like a lot of other things, this is a cost/benefit analysis. If you are comfortable with taking on the liability, then white-labeling allows for more profit. If you are not comfortable with the liability, then you have to live with commissions.

Oh, and let's not forget the possibility that the wonderful company you decide to white label can have a change of fortunes, or decide to double their pricing, creating a big decision and huge job for you to switch vendors, or break the bad news to your clients that their pricing is going to increase substantially.

 

[cyrusgod]

There isn't a "slam-dunk" answer to this, as far as I can tell. If you white-label some vendor's product, then you have two competing facts:

1. The customer sees it as YOUR product. YOU are in charge of success or failure, but....
2. It isn't your product, it is the vendor's, the success of which you have at best, less than full control over, and more commonly, little or no control over.

If you instead resell a product, as long as you are very clear with your clients that this is the VENDOR's solution you are providing, then you solve the issue with number 2, above.....mostly. But, you are then left with only a minor spiff which which to make a profit.

So, like a lot of other things, this is a cost/benefit analysis. If you are comfortable with taking on the liability, then white-labeling allows for more profit. If you are not comfortable with the liability, then you have to live with commissions.

Oh, and let's not forget the possibility that the wonderful company you decide to white label can have a change of fortunes, or decide to double their pricing, creating a big decision and huge job for you to switch vendors, or break the bad news to your clients that their pricing is going to increase substantially.

Good point. At this stage I am a little worried with number 1.. having issues with a backup and putting our reputation on the line; worrying!
Option 2 brings in some income and allows us to charge for the setup. I feel with the first option customers will expect this to be included in someway.

Think we will sign up for a commission based product at this stage. Playing with MSP 360 and having to buy Amazon S3 storage proved quite time consuming.. one for the future when I don't have hundreds of other things to manage! Thank you guys.