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The decision—not to mention the process—of changing a managed services platform can cause an MSP to have a few sleepless nights, worrying about choosing the right vendor, retraining sales and engineering staff, and migrating customers over seamlessly.
But for Ex-Cel Solutions, it was an easy choice. The Omaha, Neb.-based MSP came across a big opportunity to capture up to 400 new customers through a relationship with a software company that makes applications for credit unions. The problem was that most of the credit unions run Unix servers and Ex-Cel's MSP platform at the time, N-able Technologies Inc., did not offer the Unix support that the MSP needed, said Glenn Stenger, president of Ex-Cel.
Rather than give up a potential windfall, Ex-Cel executives started researching other MSP platform vendors for Unix support. Stenger and Larry Regier, vice president of IT services, said the cupboard was pretty bare.
The Ex-Cel execs recalled one company they had met at a trade show about a year earlier that held some promise. Ex-Cel called Redwood City, Calif.-based Nimsoft Inc., and the two companies struck a deal. Ex-Cel didn't have much money to invest, so Nimsoft agreed to let the company test its solutions for free.
"They were convinced of the long-term business opportunity that existed for us [in the credit union space]. They made it much easier for us to test and decide to move than we possibly could have without that help," Regier said.
Ex-Cel decided to migrate all its managed services customers completely over to Nimsoft and to brand its services toward the credit union industry under the name UltraWatch.
The choice to move to a new platform was especially hard because Ex-Cel had made a significant investment just four years ago on its N-able platform. Like many VARs, Ex-Cel made its name by servicing clients in the break-fix world. The company was founded in 1974 and started offering managed services about four years ago to legal clients in the Omaha area, Stenger said.
Considering the combination of fewer up-front costs with Nimsoft, enhanced support for Unix customers and the potential business increase with credit union customers, which would give the MSP a national presence for the first time, the decision to switch from N-able made sense, Stenger said.
"I remember very well the money [spent on N-able]," he said. "[The migration] took quite a bit of effort. Once you know a product, now you have to learn a new one. But our people have come through it and we're pleased with where we are at today."
Added Regier: "We did some pretty serious ROI numbers. It's not something that was taken lightly by any stretch. It's still an ongoing process. Some guys knew the [N-able] platform quite well. We had to continually cross-train. There definitely has been some resistance. There are different GUIs, different clicks. They're out of their comfort zone."
One thing that has helped get Ex-Cel associates excited about the migration has been to be open about the business opportunity, Regier said. "We've discussed that since day one. Growth locally is a longer sales cycle and the potential here allowed us, in the credit union space, to be dramatically larger. That makes it easier to fight through the challenges of changing technology."
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