Game of Technicians: Windows-Based Businesses

[TechGuy737]

The Game: List the fewest applications needed by any business that would allow you to provide
A. maintenance & optimization,
B. security,
C. backup,
D. & recovery.

Here are the rules:
1. Any recommendations have to work on a Microsoft Windows machine.
2. Any posting must include all the expected categories.
3. Any recommendations must allow for lawful commercial use.
4. Any recommendations must scale easily from 2-3 computers to 100+ computers.
5. All recommendations must be usable by any business.
5. Based on current pricing, give a total estimated cost.

Let the challenge begin! Good luck and have fun!

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

N-Central covers all of these. Can't really give specific pricing, but what numbers are you looking for.

 

[TechGuy737]

Thank you for the response. I will take a look at N-Central and see if it cuts the mustard. I'm doing research because a friend of mine has a small business with 3-4 computers and potentially looking at future growth. They also are interested in the advantages of having a server.

I do hope others will see this as a fun challenge and provide other choices. No fun when there is only one choice... lol.

 

[fencepost]

A huge amount of what you're looking at will probably depend on the number of endpoints you're talking about, as well as whether you're talking about residential, soho/home-based business, businesses with domains/servers, regulated businesses (e.g. financial & healthcare), etc.

What you'll find discussed on Technibble is mostly going to be Kabuto (residential), some Ninja, at least one Atera user, several Solarwinds MSP (former GFI) users and several Solarwinds N-Central/N-Able users. There are also some folks doing things in an arguably less-centralized way using TeamViewer or Simple-Help (both remote support options) with RMM-like features added to those, along with separate managed AV through EMSISoft, Bitdefender Gravity Zone, etc. You won't find much mention of some of the bigger players like Labtech (now part of Connectwise), Kaseya, etc. but for small needs you'd never use those anyway.

I'm not sure what kind of minimums you're going to find on some of the products, but if you're only looking at managing a small number of PCs (< 20?) I'd say you probably want to rule out N-Central (traditionally has a pretty high minimum spend) and Atera (priced per-user last time I heard anything so your per-PC cost would be higher). I'm not sure what minimums Ninja or Solarwinds MSP have.

 

[Krynn72]

Thank you for the response. I will take a look at N-Central and see if it cuts the mustard. I'm doing research because a friend of mine has a small business with 3-4 computers and potentially looking at future growth. They also are interested in the advantages of having a server.

For <5 users I'd say start with Kabuto and add in the needed features. Its plenty good enough for such a small business and robust enough to keep up as they grow. If this is the kind of company that could grow into the several hundreds or even thousands of endpoints then you'd get a "feel" for when it would be time to upgrade to a more comprehensive system like N-Central. But Kabuto could get you there I think.