Partner Success Story
MSP Upgrades from N-able to Axcient for Better BDR at the Same Price
Fed up with complex billing and lack of support, Osprey I.T. Consulting moves to x360Recover for reinforced data protection with automated features and hardware-free BDR.
Meet Osprey I.T. Consulting:
- Based in Richmond, Virginia
- Starting 2019
- Serving SMBs with 2,000 or fewer employees
- Providing IT consulting, staffing, and support
Axcient partner since January 2023
The Challenge
Enough is Enough: When Billing and Support Go Bad
Time is money, and Joshua Pavlock, the CEO and Founder of Osprey I.T. Consulting was losing money due to – of all things – billing. After SolarWinds rebranded to N-able in 2021, Joshua says, “billing got really complicated and labor-intensive,” among other issues.
“Just to pay our bill, we had to get N-able’s billing department to send us one email with a PDF of the bill – plus a second email with a document we had to fill out using the bill they sent us. Then we had to sign it, verify the signature with DocuSign, and send it back. Then they’d charge our card. That’s a 7-step process every month!”
Unfortunately, billing fatigue wasn’t the only thing plaguing Osprey. Joshua says support was so unresponsive that he had to threaten to go public with his poor experiences to get their attention.
“We’ve had plenty of arguments with them about trying to get support over very long periods of time. At one point, I emailed their multimedia department because I still couldn’t get tech support after four days. Only after I said I was going to slam them on my podcast was I finally able to get help with the issue that was actually a problem on their end.”
The Solution
Get More BCDR Features to Give Better BCDR to Clients
That was the last straw for Joshua and Osprey. He demanded better service for his MSP and his clients, and that’s how he found Axcient.
“When I came across Axcient, I was really impressed with what you get for the pricing. Especially with the Direct-to-Cloud option in x360Recover. Also, when deciding between Axcient and its competitors, Axcient’s storage facilities are in the U.S. or countries that are friendly with the U.S. I didn’t want anything backed up in countries that would present a security risk, and they gave me that protection.”
Joshua describes moving Osprey’s clients to Axcient as “very simple.” So simple that he didn’t charge clients for the time spent converting backups. Using the cloud-based deployment option in x360Recover – Direct-to-Cloud – Osprey quickly upgraded its clients to comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) without raising prices.
“The pricing for Axcient and N-able was the same, so I was happy to tell clients we were changing BDR solutions, it’s going to give them more features, but it’s not going to cost any more. I explained the restorative cloud feature, Direct-to-Cloud, and a lot of them thought that that was really impressive and good protection to have.”
In addition to providing clients safety in the cloud, Joshua is also excited to expand Osprey’s BCDR offerings for on-prem environments. Because x360Recover can be deployed with or without hardware, clients can choose their preference, and Osprey doesn’t need to manage an additional solution and vendor.
“Axcient can back up to the cloud and on-site, which is great. N-able didn’t have that. Other solutions wanted me to buy a piece of equipment, put it on-site, and maintain it. But my SMB customers don’t want to pay for that, so having cloud backup is just amazing.”
The Results
Quick, Efficient, and Proven: High-Value Business Continuity + Business Enablement
Since moving to Axcient, Osprey is better equipped to protect clients and reach strategic goals with automated security features and built-in business enablement. Joshua and his accounting team are back to no-nonsense billing within a user-friendly platform that fuels productivity.
“Billing is excellent, and the solution is easy to navigate and get things done. I absolutely love it! There’s less for me to worry about and spend unnecessary man hours on. I’m saving money because I’m not paying my accountant for two hours of work just to pay a bill like I was with N-able.”
Axcient’s true test came when a major Osprey client suffered an unexpected server meltdown. The client, a distributor of high-end appliances, had all of its business-critical data virtualized on that one server. Luckily, with Direct-to-Cloud, Joshua knew they could restore to the Axcient Cloud.
With that said, Osprey had only been with Axcient for less than six months, and Dell had a four-week lead time on getting a new server out. Joshua called support, and a “knowledgeable technician” walked him through setting up a Virtual Office.
“If it wasn’t for Direct-to-Cloud, our client would’ve had to shut down for a whole month. Instead, I spun them up in the Virtual Office, set up the local stuff to run off a local router, and set up site-to-site VPNs. Unfortunately, their software had a hard time running over VPN, so I turned to Axcient support again. We spun up four of their desktops in the Virtual Office so users could remote into the desktops and work like normal.”
It only took Joshua 15-20 minutes to get the Virtual Office spun up, and the workstations were faster than that. Because Osprey had responsive support and built-in disaster recovery features, it was able to deliver the business continuity their clients expect.
“The most important thing is that our client is working. They’re getting stuff done, they’re not losing business, and they’re not losing money. Everything is still coming in and out, and without that, they would have a really hard time.”
Joshua and Osprey are also leveraging Axcient’s built-in automatic backup integrity tests to increase their value with clients more efficiently. Using AutoVerify, Osprey can quickly deliver on some of the optional features offered to clients. For example, clients can choose to receive weekly backup tests and quarterly server restores to validate disaster recovery preparedness.
“I used to have to restore to a machine in my office to make sure backups were working properly. AutoVerify is a really big help because now I can do it virtually in the cloud, and it’s 10x easier. I can confirm backup health and bootability from my home office, see if anything is corrupted, and know that the backups are there when I need them.”
Today, Osprey I.T. Consulting has eight servers backing up with Direct-to-Cloud, and five clients backing up Microsoft 365 data with Axcient x360Cloud. Joshua is enjoying the operational efficiencies that allow Osprey to act quickly, deliberately, and securely in both day-to-day tasks as well as during disaster recovery.
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