MSP News

Why Wanova Believes MSPs Can Make Money Managing Desktops

By MSP Alliance Blogs

I had the privilege of sitting down with some of the team at Wanova last week and got a briefing on their technology and vision of desktop management within the MSP channel. Wanova, for those of you who don't know, is a cloud based desktop management technology company with a unique approach to managing desktops. VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure, has been around for a while now and has been widely adopted by MSPs globally. But don't let Wanova hear you calling them a VDI company; Wanova's approach is different. 

Rather than relying on vanilla VDI technology, Wanova has taken desktop as a service (DaaS) and desktop backup and fused them together to offer MSPs a desktop backup and recovery solution designed to minimize MSP internal support costs. The technology is pretty cool but I'll let you be the judge of that. Where I get excited is when a MSP can actually lower (by significant amounts) their desktop management costs and actually start to make money by managing desktops. 

For those of you saying "big deal", I've been doing thin client configurations for years, Wanova would tell you that this is not thin client computing. Yes, there is a server side image that can be quickly deployed to an end-user, but unlike thin client setups, the end-user actually has greater latitude to configure their machine the way they want to, including having their own unique files (yes they are backed up by Wanova) all while offering the MSP an easy methodology for restoring files and OS images very quickly. The catch, in case you missed it, is that instead of spending countless hours troubleshooting a damaged PC, MSPs can now restore an OS image, along with the user's unique files, and be done with it rather quickly. How quickly, I'll let you talk to Wanova and see for yourself. MSPAlliance does not make any money if you decide to buy from Wanova (or any other member); give them a look and make up your own mind. 

I'm sure there are situations where this may not be the idea solution. However, I know from personal experience that desktop support tends to be a major area of concern for many MSPs who do not have a rigorous set of policies in place. Desktops shouldn't be the black hole for MSP profits. No matter what solution you use, having a process in place that can guard against endless hours of time spent on a relatively easy solution should be a no brainer. 

Written by: Charles Weaver, CEO of MSPAlliance