“Our company migrated 35TB in only a few weeks and are now loving it. So, don’t be afraid, make a switch!” - Eric Marcus, the founder of Marcus Networking
Background
Established by Eric Marcus in 2002, Marcus Networking is a family operated business. The company provides technology and telecommunication solutions to businesses in the Southwest United States. The Marcus Networking portfolio includes clients in Arizona, California, and Nevada representing a variety of industries including medical, manufacturing, produce, finance, retail, schools, and non-profits. Six years ago, as the company’s bandwidth became faster and cheaper, Marcus Networking decided to move their clients’ backups to the cloud.
Business Challenge
The main advantage of cloud vs local backup that Marcus Networking saw, was that they could no longer depend on the availability of the clients’ offices. “We could fully automate our solution and manage backup failures much faster and easier without ever having to be onsite”, Eric Marcus, the founder of Marcus Networking, said. The biggest problem that Marcus Networking eventually encountered was that the company wanted to have more control over the cloud storage that they use and the licenses of the backup products that they provide their customers with. “We wanted full control over our backup service”, Marcus commented.
The IT service provider used many offsite companies in the past, from Ahsay and Asigra to Intronis. “Leaving tape and local backups behind, we realized that it would only make sense to move to a truly reliable cloud backup solution. We never stopped looking for the right one,” Eric Marcus said. The key factors for them were pricing and reliability. The reason why Marcus Networking decided to switch from Intronis backup was the cost that they were paying for their client’s heavy backups. “We wanted to be able to offer our customers those service plans that could match what their actual needs were and also to increase our margins”, Eric Marcus added. Ease of deployment and good support were two of the company’s specific criteria when they started looking for alternatives to Intronis.
Solution
Marcus Networking learned about MSP360’s backup solutions. After some consideration and testing, they decided to deploy MSP360 Managed Backup for their work.
“The major differences that we saw between MSP360 and Intronis, as well as other backup products that we used before, were the ability to choose and control your cloud storage and control the licenses. You essentially pay for what you want and use. That’s what we liked about it”, Eric Marcus told us.
One of the company’s major goals was making it easier to diagnose backup failures. “With СloudBerry Managed Backup and the way that the logging works, it is very easy to check a failed backup. Compared to our previous solution, we now save on average 5 minutes per ticket”, Marcus commented.
Since Marcus Networking is committed to solving both their customers’ IT needs and saving their money, they appreciated the pay-as-you-go model for licenses that MSP360 offers. “This is how we prefer to work with our clients, not having to purchase or sell them more of something they are not using”, Marcus said. The pricing of MSP360 Managed Backup has allowed the IT service provider to secure new clients by word of mouth from their current base. The switch also allowed the margins to grow by at least 400%. “It’s amazing, to be honest”, Eric Marcus, the founder of Marcus Networking, said.
“The experience with support has also been great. We have had to call in 2 times and each time we got the answer that we needed quickly,” Eric added.
The company now backs up 400 customers with 1500 endpoints and 200 servers. The total amount of data backed up with MSP360 Managed Backup is 40TB. “We currently back up sets that use imaging for Hyper V, VMWare, bare metal instances, flat files, exchange, and SQL,” Marcus said.
Conclusion
To remain capable of adapting ever-changing cloud technology to their customers’ needs, Marcus Networking decided to leave their Intronis backup solution behind. The company chose to store their clients’ backups in public cloud storage and opted for the cloud storage provider that was most suitable for them, Amazon Web Services. MSP360 Managed Backup allowed Marcus Networking to work directly with Amazon cloud storage and successfully shifted all their data to Amazon. The IT service provider also benefited from the more flexible model of purchasing licenses for backup products that MSP360 offers. They now pay for as much space in its cloud storage and as many licenses as their clients use. As a result, Marcus Networking’s margins grew by 400%.
With MSP360 Managed Backup, Marcus Networking now saves, on average, 5 minutes on managing each customer due to an easier way of diagnosing backup failures. This significantly optimizes the work of their IT staff. “Make the switch! Don't be afraid, it is well worth it. Our company migrated 35TB in over a few weeks and now are loving it”, Eric Marcus, the founder of Marcus Networking said.
