As the World Health Organization (WHO) declares the coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic, MSPs are one of many parties facing big challenges in how to operate their businesses during these times. Many MSPs travel extensively to their customers’ offices but are now finding themselves needing to limit (or cancel altogether) travel so that they don’t risk getting and/or spreading the virus.
Compounding the complexity of this issue is the fact that MSPs are also dealing with a dramatic rise in demand for remote/virtual solutions that will help their customers enable their employees to work from home, too. So not only do MSPs need a way to deliver virtual solutions remotely, but they need to enable their customers to empower thousands of employees – many who have never worked remotely – to be productive from home.
In today’s post – the latest in our series on enabling remote work during the age of the coronavirus – we’ll be talking about the increased importance of the role of the MSP in helping companies enable remote work, while also working to keep their people safe.
Enabling Productivity, Remotely
One of the key challenges of the sudden increase in remote work is, well – the suddenness. In many cases, IT teams aren’t given any notice of the corporate decision to mandate remote work. In other cases, they’re only given a matter of days to prepare. And because a large percentage (68%) of workers don’t have a corporate laptop, often times IT has to deal with situations where people are being asked to work from home on their personal devices.
And while many of the applications that we all use day-to-day are SaaS-based and accessible from anywhere, the reality is that every business depends on at least a few legacy Windows applications that have yet to be web-enabled.
All of this combined is leading to completely overwhelmed internal IT teams.
The Changing Role of the MSP in the Age of Coronavirus
As a result, these overwhelmed IT are increasingly turning to MSPs for help. And when it comes to being able to quickly and cost-effectively give people access to the critical applications that they need to be productive – on any device, including personal devices – that’s a difficult task for MSPs who also can’t physically go and install software on all of their customers’ employees’ devices at this time.
Let’s break down a few of the key challenges. Since remote work mandates are happening NOW, or have already happened, these businesses need to give their employees access to their critical applications:
- Quickly – Traditionally, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or Desktop as a Service (DaaS) product was the go-to options for providing people virtual access to applications. But these products take months to set up and often require software to be installed on people’s devices in order to work. When people need access yesterday, an MSP proposing a solution that will take months to provision is a deal-killer.
- Cost-Effectively – Both VDI and DaaS solutions require significant investment in either infrastructure, heavy licensing agreements, or both. And when it comes to providing people with remote access to their critical applications, full virtual desktop environments are not just incredibly expensive – they’re also overkill.
- On Any Device – By “any device”, we’re not just talking about enabling people to access these critical Windows apps on any OS (Windows, Mac, Chromebooks, Linux, etc.) – although that is of course critical. But in the case of the current remote work climate, this also means giving people access to applications on their personal devices. And because these devices are not corporate-owned and managed, that increases the need for a solution that can enable access to applications…
- Securely – Just giving users access to the applications they need isn’t enough. What if their personal devices are riddled with malware? You must be able to provide a solution that can separate the user’s device/OS from the application layer, so that they can access the applications without posing any threat to the corporate network.
Cameyo Helps MSPs to Enable Remote Work, Remotely
With Cameyo for MSPs, MSPs can easily publish all of the critical applications that a business needs access to within minutes and deliver those applications to all of the customer’s users, on any device, from the browser. This means nothing needs to be installed or updated on each user’s device, giving them instant access to the applications they need to be productive from home – all without the MSP needing to visit the customer’s site. In addition, Cameyo for MSPs provides:
- Simplified Management – Easily add new customers and deliver the apps they need to any devices within minutes, all from a single pane of glass in your Cameyo for MSP dashboard.
- Reduced Cost – Eliminate the confusion and high cost of VDI licensing issues, enabling you to deliver a better, more secure solution with a significantly lower cost per user. Get rid of bill shock forever.
- Eliminate Complexity – Remove the complexity of managing VDI across multiple customer environments, and deliver seamless software updates that are completely transparent to your customers.
- Enhanced Security – Provide your customers with a virtual application delivery service that is fully encrypted while adding a layer of security by separating applications from the OS. All customer data is protected and private and never resides on a Cameyo server, plus your customers can lock user settings for PCI and data compliance needs.
- Easy Scalability – No need to set up a different VDI environment for each customer, or manage those many environments. Cameyo for MSPs enables you to easily add new customers in your Cameyo dashboard and get them started in minutes, not weeks or months.
The coronavirus is making remote work an imperative, which in turn is evolving and elevating the role of the MSP as a strategic partner who can help businesses effectively enable remote productivity for all of their people – quickly, cost-effectively, and securely. If you’re an MSP looking for help in profitably delivering these services to your customers, we can help. You can start your own free trial of Cameyo for MSPs here, or you can contact us directly at [email protected].