Spring Cleaning: How to Clean Up Existing BDR Solutions for Customers

It’s about that time of the year where managed services providers (MSPs) are gearing up for spring cleaning — assisting customers with tidying up their existing data backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solutions.

As spring rolls in its warmer weather, some BDR customers may forget about the benefits of leveraging a disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) plan — but that’s where an MSP with a spring cleaning strategy can strengthen its trusted advisor role.

TUC Managed IT Solutions Technology Vice President Shann Bosnell told MSPmentor that his company is always “thinking of how we can help our customers clean up their existing BDR solutions.”

“Our customers appreciate the little touches that go into something like this,” he said.

To assist MSPs with putting together a spring cleaning strategy, Bosnell provided MSPmentor with TUC’s spring cleaning checklist.

Does the BDR solution make sense for customers?

“Every quarter we take a look at the backup and business continuity solutions our customers utilize within our PSA and monitoring tools,” Bosnell said.

Once this is done, TUC’s business development managers work together with the company’s technical teams to review how customers are benefitting from their existing setups. If customers are not benefitting from a solution, TUC looks elsewhere. 

“This could mean basic changes to a customer’s business requirements with data security or changes in a customer’s requirements for RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective),” he said.

Check licensing requirements for traditional backup

Customers on traditional backup solutions have licensing requirements to meet, Bosnell said. Ensure that your customers have met the licensing requirements and “identify if there are any changes to those licenses that might benefit the customers,” he added.

Investigate physical backup solutions

Bosnell said MSPs may want to investigate a customer’s physical backup solution. Is the appliance meeting the need of the customer? Is the solution under warranty? If not, can an extended warranty be purchased to protect them? 

Do some actual spring cleaning

TUC physically cleans customer environments to ensure that everything is in place, he said. “This could mean cleaning the area to ensure that no dust or other issues may cause a hardware failure,” Bosnell added.

Pay attention to regulation changes

“Understand changes in the customers environment, not only physically but regulation changes that may affect them resulting in requirements for a better solution to meet requirements like HIPAA,” he said.

Bosnell last spoke with MSPmentor on how BDR vendors can be more open to hybrid business continuity by working with MSPs.

Follow CJ Arlotta on Twitter @cjarlotta for further updates on the story above.