Page 58 - Security Today, November/December 2018

Dealer Strategies
Bringing Hope to SMB Networks NETGEAR helps Hopemate standardize their client management platform
By Richard Jonker
Hopemate is a small IT ser- vice provider located in the Greater Vancouver, Canada, area that brings IT support to small businesses in its community. Founder, Ian Chang, started as an IT freelancer and eventually decided to turn his work into a small business. Hope- mate now provides IT integrations, installa- tions and general troubleshooting services for their clients.
As Hopemate’s client base grew and ex- panded to managing customer networks, it
became a challenge to oversee all the differ- ent sites. Chang knew the key to Hopemate’s future was to standardize the management platform. They needed a solution that was cost effective and consolidated all customer site interfaces.
Hopemate installed a variety of NET- GEAR’s Insight managed devices (switch- es, access points and network storage devices) for four of his customers. They consist of businesses in real estate, medi- cal and printing with 10 to 30 employees. Immediately following, Chang was able to
remotely manage those networks from the Insight mobile app and web portal directly from his office.
The Insight network management app and portal have made Chang’s job easier, and more time efficient. He can initially con- figure his customers’ device(s) remotely and later guide his clients through the rest of the simple setup without having to allocate time traveling to different locations. Additionally, he is able to configure through a more ad- vanced GUIs offsite.
Monitoring and troubleshooting have improved immensely for Hopemate. Before, Chang would have to wait for a call from his customers notifying him that their Wi-Fi was down, then drive over to troubleshoot. With the Insight mobile app he receives notifica- tions when something goes wrong and can take action anywhere, anytime. Whether it’s rebooting a device, updating the firmware, or changing user access, he no longer has to be onsite to fix the simple problems.
This solution has saved hours of valuable time. Chang now uses to continue growing his business. Future Hopemate plans are to install the NETGEAR Insight Ecosystem to a few other customers
this year, further expand-
ing his MSP business.
Richard Jonker is the vice president SMB Product Line Manage- ment at NETGEAR.
Insight Pro Gets Top Rating for Network Management Solutions
By Ralph C. Jensen
Many businesses today are structured to have regional offices, which oversee activities at numerous locations. These businesses include Managed Services Providers (MSPs), satellite and branch offices, retail, gas stations and fast food chains, healthcare and regional and local government or education. Regardless of the type of business, these businesses all have common networking needs. They all want and need feature-rich reliable connectivity, good Wi-Fi performance and secure networking.
The Tolly Group, a third party testing service, has concluded through extensive testing of network management solutions that NETGEAR’s Insight Pro provides the best deployment architecture for small multi-location businesses.
“When NETGEAR introduced me to their comprehensive switch, wireless, VPN Firewall and also NAS management solution, which is able to be deployed, managed, monitored and supported from the cloud without the need for access keys or the high cost of other cloud deployed systems, my team knew it would transform how we manage and interact with our clients,” said Bill Albertson, president and CEO for Badger Communications. “It would not only open up new business for Badger Communications but would also offer better IT uptime and coverage for those end customers we have deployed Insight Pro with, many of which, may have thought that this level of Cloud IT infrastructure was priced beyond their budget constraints and thus inaccessible.”
The testing has shown NETGEAR Insight Pro is the right solution for both end-business users as well as service providers. The report said the product offered an architecture designed for multi-customer, multi-location businesses; multi-role management and monitoring; simple and flexible setup and is a highly-functional cloud portal.
Ralph C. Jensen is the editor-in-chief of Security Today.
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