Standardizing with x360 Platform Contributes to NSR Tripling in Size in Only 2 Years

Standardization is paramount to everything NSR Business Solutions does. Without it, they can’t offer the level of service that their clients expect, and if they didn’t do it, they wouldn’t be able to properly support their clients. It would be impossible. Matt Kuzba, Vice President at NSR Business Solutions, says “There are too many different things to manage at once. It really makes it easier on the techs when everything is familiar, and it’s a lot less stressful for everyone when everything is more or less the same.” Too many vendors in one stack increases costs and requires more management resources

The Challenge

Accelerating Backup and Recovery with Compatibility

Having been through the evolution of tape, disk, and offsite backups, NSR Business Solutions sought a new solution for the next era of backup and disaster recovery (BDR). Not only did they want snapshot, image-based backups, but they also needed a solution for Microsoft 365 backup and backup in the cloud. Microsoft’s limited 14-day retention period and the influx of SMBs migrating to the cloud required NSR to seek new solutions for these clients.

They were using NAS devices for backing up files, which made for a long and arduous restore process – especially when a server had terabytes of data. Heavily invested in the VMware virtualization platform, NSR needed a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solution that integrated easily and delivered fast recovery.

Matt Kuzba, Vice President of NSR, says, “Having the option to run our client’s stuff in the DR cloud was another driving force behind moving to image-based backups.

We needed to be able to answer the question of, what are clients going to do if they can’t work for a week because they don’t have power?” Matt went on to say, “That can be a business-ending event, and we didn’t want our technology to be part of a business-ending event. We wanted it to be part of the solution to stop the business-ending event. So that’s why we wanted to switch.”

The Solution

Expanding BDR Services With a Simple Standard Stack

After testing and reviewing various solutions in the market, NSR decided to standardize with Axcient’s x360 portal with x360Recover for BCDR and x360Cloud for Microsoft 365 backup. Matt explains, “We needed to make sure that we had a backup solution compatible with our environment. It needed to be easy to use in conjunction with VMware virtualization, and that’s why we chose x360Recover over all the other solutions. Based on how x360Recover uses KVM virtualization, it makes for a straightforward recovery process. It is very short, and there are a lot of parities there that make the recovery time really quick and easy. It made the most sense for our environment and how we deploy things.”

After adding Axcient to their stack, NSR standardized all of their clients on Axcient’s BDR appliances onsite and replicated to a vault offsite. Smaller clients who don’t want or need a BDR appliance utilize Axcient’s hardware-free BCDR solution, x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud.
x360Cloud is automatically included in NSR contracts with clients who rely on Microsoft 365 tools for data storage and sharing.

Choosing to take a security-first approach, NSR includes BDR in all their client agreements and doesn’t allow for anything different:

“We don’t sell backups as a separate service. For our clients, it’s built into our offering so they know if their building burns down, we can instantly spin up in a DR cloud. They get 30 days free in the DR cloud, so in the event of a prolonged power outage or something like that – which we have seen – they can run their set up, VPN in, and RDP to their terminal server while we get everything moved back over. It keeps the wheels of the business churning, and clients are happy about that.”

The Results

Today, when something happens, we can fire up a client’s whole environment on one of our BDR appliances in 30 minutes – that’s the gold standard. So being able to save the day in 30 minutes versus having to stay up all night and have a Tier 3 tech work on a server restore all night to only hopefully get the client back up by 6 a.m. And often, those don’t go right, and we’re down for two days.”

Matt Kuzba, Vice President at NSR Business Solutions

• 15-minute RPO and less than 1-hour RTO maintain business continuity no matter what.
• A new revenue stream that protects the Microsoft 365 tools SMBs are already using.
• Tripled the size of the MSP in two years.

Lowering Total Costs for Significant Business Growth

Standardizing with Axcient, adding Microsoft 365 backup protection, and streamlining operations have contributed to NSR tripling in size within two years. Providing the security solutions clients need in the simple, uniform, and easy-to-use x360 portal allows NSR to recover quickly, no matter how bad the incident. Matt recounts a recent cyber disaster and how Axcient enabled fast and efficient recovery. “A couple of weeks ago, we had a Two Drive Raid Five Failure, and the customer was back up in just 15 to 30 minutes. It only took one of my Tier 2 techs to get them running again, and I didn’t have to get a Tier 3 tech. That’s another thing that makes us more agile now. In the past, the server outage would be a Tier 3 thing, whereas now, people can just follow the documented processes for that and do a quick touch base.”

NSR has lowered its total cost of ownership (TCO) by streamlining and reducing vendor management and recovery with just one backup vendor. Cyber liability insurance, which has been driving the BDR conversation with clients, is now easier to comply with, as is the completion of the long, tedious, and overwhelming questionnaires and audits. With just one solution and one vendor, it’s easier to meet the demands of carriers to support clients. Additionally, NSR can hire less skilled technicians to do more skilled jobs by leveraging the technology, automation, and innovation included in Axcient’s solutions.

Standardization continues to empower technicians with uniformity across their tech stack. Matt says, “Techs have the same portal, the same screens, the same stuff they’ve been looking at for the last 5 years. There’s minimal training, and it’s easy to cross-train and have different people do different stuff. It really makes you a lot more efficient.” Moving forward, NSR plans to continue using Axcient’s BCDR solutions to enhance data protection, evolve with the cybersecurity landscape, and increase profits and business growth through standardization and efficiency.