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The problem
As a Managed Service Provider (MSP), Mirus IT not only provides outsourced
IT services to customers, but also acts as their virtual Chief Information Officer
(vCIO). In this role, Mirus often suggested customers buy a product to help
reduce the number of virus and malware infections — however, few customers
were acting upon this advice. "Not many of our customers went with our
recommendation to protect themselves. Business owners were telling me that
they would prefer to accept the risk rather than incur the cost of implementing a
content [security] tool," explains Mirus IT Managing Director Paul Tomlinson.
Since they offer a fully managed and flat-fee IT service to their customers, this
meant that Mirus IT was spending a lot of time dealing with infections at customer
sites. "There was no additional cost to customers if we spent days or even weeks
dealing with infections and so, profitability wise, this had a big impact on us as
a business". Mirus was considering taking on two full-time field engineers to
deal with the anticipated infections across the expanding number of customer
endpoints.
The time spent managing infections not only impacted the bottom line but also
had a negative effect on the relationship with customers. A typical rebuild of
an infected machine would take 8 hours, time that Mirus would have preferred
to spend adding value to customer relationships through account management
activities.
