ICT provider turns to Avast RMM for security | Avast Business

The Partner

Transforming traditional technology environments to high-performing, resilient ones is what GCI does best. Headquartered in the UK, GCI helps over 4,000 customers in the private and public sectors —across education, healthcare, construction, housing, retail,  entertainment, and more—to meet their digital needs as their businesses change and evolve. The company’s five integrated technology pillars include Full IT Support, Unified Communications, Cloud, Security & Compliance, and Network & Infrastructure.

GCI has also received recent investment of over £60m from Mayfair Equity Partners LLP to drive continued growth and added value for customers. “With Mayfair’s support of our next phase of growth, it’s an exciting time for us. We are continuing to integrate our services delivery with a goal of offering tremendous synergies through an enriched product set and cross-selling our services,” says Richard Cook, GCI Director, who brings over 26 years of experience in IT and managed security.

The Challenge

Mayfair’s support presents both an opportunity and a challenge.  “We have a growing customer base that can benefit from effective IT monitoring and management,” says Richard. “Beyond delivering premium security services, we need to provide the strategic and proactive planning that will align to clients’ evolving needs and business outcomes. This will set clients up for success, build strong relationships, and generate recurring revenue for our business.”

The Solution

Prior to joining GCI, Richard used Avast Business Managed Workplace remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution. It was therefore a natural decision for this long-time AVG-Avast channel partner to replace GCI’s existing SolarWinds MSP RMM for Managed Workplace, signing a three-year renewal.

GCI also added 10,000 licenses for Avast Business Pro Plus Antivirus, migrating from the company’s existing antivirus solution.

Richard explains, “With Managed Workplace, we have a proven RMM platform that we know can scale to our business model and support the needs of GCI’s large customer base. We can actively monitor our clients’ IT environments and manage regular patching, backups, antivirus, device management, and much more.”

For Richard, the advantage of Managed Workplace is its simplicity. “A lot of solution vendors talk about their monitoring capabilities but many RMMs can be too complex and take too much time to implement. This means they don’t get fully deployed or don’t get deployed correctly.”

“Managed Workplace has the right kind of complexity with functionality targeted for our needs. It doesn’t try to be too clever – it is exactly what we need.”

“As an MSP, we can get overloaded with information from our customers’ environments,” adds Richard. “Managed Workplace is ideal for monitoring and through its central pane of glass and integrated capabilities — such as security assessment, antivirus, patch management, and reporting — it provides a full-service package,” adds Richard. “It’s easy to install and deploy and provides the information we need without the noise.”

The Results

Here are just a few results from GCI’s positive experience using Managed Workplace:

• Renewed Managed Workplace for three years with 30,000 licenses to replace GCI’s existing RMM solution;
• Added 10,000 new licenses of Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus, replacing GCI’s existing antivirus solution;
• Made plans to migrate 1,000+ customers to Managed Workplace by year-end;
• Looked at cross-sell opportunities across the GCI customer base.

GCI also places great importance on monitoring. The company requires absolute uptime and has strict SLAs on response times. That means they don’t just monitor alerts, they take action.

“Managed Workplace is essential for us,” says Richard. “From one platform, I have the ability to manage all customers without looking at multiple screens.”

To improve your IT company’s efficiencies and take advantage of the useful features that the Managed Workplace RMM provides, download a free trial of Managed Workplace and get the tools and insights you and your clients need.