A commonly held belief on growing a successful IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) business is to transition from the \u201cbig bang\u201d model to instead seeking out opportunities to generate recurring revenue.<\/p>\n
Recurring revenue enables your IT business to build a predictable stream of income, making your life as a business owner much easier, and your business more valuable.<\/p>\n
One opportunity to generate recurring revenue is through antivirus products.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, IT companies and antivirus vendors have promoted annual renewals for antivirus products. Many forward-thinking IT providers now look at this model as a chore to deal with. The administrative overhead of managing a fluctuating antivirus license, adding or subtracting licenses as the client’s business demands, is a pain. Sending multiple invoices to the client throughout the year \u2013 perhaps with pro-rata costs for new licenses \u2013 might be difficult, but it can become a nightmare if your antivirus vendor doesn\u2019t allow part-annual licenses, and instead insists on a new license for each additional workstation or server. This can put you in a situationwhere some licenses expire at different points in the year.<\/p>\n
Clients can find annual antivirus renewals inflexible. During the last recession, some MSP clients were reluctant to authorise antivirus renewals because they knew they\u2019d be laying staff off in the next few months and they didn\u2019t want to commit to being over-licensed.<\/p>\n
Add in the fact that traditionally many antivirus vendors offer keen incentives to new subscribers to lure them away from competing products, and you\u2019re left with a challenge persuading your client why they should stick with your preferred product when a competing product is half the price.<\/p>\n
You might rapidly come to the conclusion then, that annual antivirus contracts are a pain for both MSP and client.<\/p>\n
From an MSP\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s important to choose an antivirus product that is MSP friendly. As you add increasing amounts of antivirus clients across different sites, having to log in to multiple interfaces to administer multiple systems across multiple clients is a nightmare in logistics.<\/p>\n
The solution is to find an antivirus product that is fully\u00a0multi-tenanted.<\/strong>\u00a0You and your engineers should be free to manage multiple clients, across multiple sites from a single interface.<\/p>\n Many MSPs have moved to a monthly recurring antivirus subscription model using an MSP-aware antivirus vendor \u2013 as a result they have reported significant time savings from both a technical and financial administrative perspective.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, many MSPs have come to realise that the more services \u2013 such as managed antivirus \u2013\u00a0that they offer to their client base, the more \u201csticky\u201d they become with that client.<\/p>\n So how does managed antivirus work? Put simply, you deploy antivirus products to all your clients‘ workstations, servers and even remote PCs (think the MD\u2019s home PC, or the FD\u2019s netbook). You bill the client on a monthly basis, 30-days in advance, adjusting your invoice each month depending on whether any licenses have been added or removed. Then, at the end of each month you report back to the antivirus vendor on how many antivirus licenses you\u2019ve used, and the antivirus vendor bills you.<\/p>\n The client is happy, because they aren\u2019t paying for anything more than they need and they no longer have to pay the \u201cbig bang\u201d of annual antivirus renewals. The MSP is happy because they\u2019ve billed the client up front. The antivirus Vendor is happy because the MSP is selling more licenses.<\/p>\nThe ins and outs of managed antivirus<\/h2>\n