Syncretic developed a new service around GFI Network Server Monitor
Most Syncretic customers do not have an in-house employee dedicated to manage the company's internal networks, so customers rely heavily on Syncretic to support their IT operations. Syncretic conducts an initial assessment of every new client's network in order to learn how it's being used from a business, application, and hardware standpoint. Once the assessment is complete, Syncretic provides its customers with a detailed "best practices" needs assessment. This allows the customer to understand where holes and deficiencies are in their infrastructure. Once the client's network was in place, Syncretic maintains a high level of response to support requests initiated by the customer. In evaluating the types of support cases being resolved, Syncretic recognized that 30% of more of its responses to support were reactive in nature and that a remote monitoring system could alleviate many of the problems before they occur.
Proactive Service is Syncretic's Best Practice
Being in constant contact with the customer's server allows Syncretic to verify that all network servers including Internet and email connections are maintained. Before implementing GFI Network Server Monitor, Syncretic had no way of proactively monitoring this information and only knew of problems after being contacted by the customer. This approach often left the customer in crisis during critical business operations.
Syncretic offers customers the monitoring package which provides alerts and accompanying network services to address issues. This minimizes downtime and avoids crises. Customers now have peace of mind knowing that, for a small fee, they are on 24-hour surveillance, often being alerted to a problem before they've even noticed it.
Once the initial set up is complete, Syncretic uses GFI Network Server Monitor, to remotely monitor CPU usage, printer availability, file existence, process running, folder size, file size, users and groups membership, disk partition check and disk space. The GFI Network Server Monitor allows Syncretic to provide customers with real-time monitoring of their Internet and network. To ensure 100 percent monitoring coverage, Syncretic needed to ensure they were receiving good telemetry between their site and each customer's site. Syncretic created an additional monitoring element, dubbed the 'node monitor,' which allows the Syncretic IT team to 'monitor the monitors.'
"Our goal is to move our customers away from maniac mode and toward a more proactive mode, making them and us more productive. GFI Network Server Monitor is part of the solution and our best practices. It helps us to monitor the customer's network spotting potential issues and avoiding any systems crises that may otherwise catch them off guard," said Syncretic's CEO Seth Rosenberg. "The additional revenue generated from monitoring contracts helps Syncretic continue to improve its best practices and continue integrating other GFI products into their arsenal," added Rosenberg.
GFI Network Server Monitor provides real-time response
The biggest benefits of using GFI are the flexibility that GFI allows for customization of its solutions and GFI Network Server Monitor. The product's flexibility allows Syncretic to better serve its SMB customers by setting real-time alert thresholds that are tailored to each customer IT needs. The alerts are especially important when it comes to monitoring available hard drive space.
Minimal or no hard drive space on a server can severely hamper operations on a network, so it's important that Syncretic can set hard drive thresholds with GFI Network Server Monitor in order to allow for enough time to react to a customers' dwindling free hard drive space. Syncretic also offers its customers monthly proactive maintenance by monitoring non-emergency event logs on a monthly basis in order to avoid issues such as low hard drive free space, and non-critical operating system services warnings. If a Syncretic team member receives an alert that's not critical, they are able to wait until the monthly maintenance check to address the alert.
"We want to know about the messages that say, 'an important service failed,' or 'you're out of hard drive space,' because these messages need immediate attention. Sometimes people just dump stuff onto the network and don't realize how much space they're using," explained Rosenberg. "GFI Network Server Monitor allows us to have real time access, just like what you would expect in a network operations center for Qwest or AT&T."
Delivering on the promise of service
Syncretic must be responsive at all times, or risk putting its customers in a compromising situation. GFI Network Server Monitor allows Syncretic to honor its service commitment to its customers and keep network downtime to a minimum. Syncretic's clientele includes many professional service firms and Rosenberg doesn't want to put them in a position where they can't access their server. Often, a problem will occur over the weekend and Syncretic will have an on-call technician working on it almost immediately. Before the customer even knows what's going on, Syncretic has contacted them and fixed the problem; leaving a message Monday morning explaining what went wrong and how it was fixed.
"The most valuable benefit we provide our customer is peace of mind. It's like the telephone. You don't know about it until it doesn't work," said Rosenberg. "Customers take it for granted that everything is being watched. I know it sounds cliché, but it's what we do."
After looking at a number of products, Rosenberg found that GFI Network Server Monitor provided extra product support, reliability and value to its customers. This saved him from charging his customers extra for the unnecessary bells and whistles that competitive providers were adding to their packages. Since purchasing GFI Network Server Monitor, Syncretic hasn't had any problems, something that Rosenberg attributes to getting the 'right' information upfront, and GFI's first-rate support and quick response time to questions.
"The reason for going with GFI was the good value we could pass along to our customers," said Rosenberg. "You get a good product with responsiveness at a good value. It's a no-brainer."
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