The evolution of managed services—from on-premises to the cloud—largely improves service agility and lowers operational costs for managed service providers (MSPs) and their customers. However, for customers, shifting data and applications to the cloud typically reduces human touchpoints. And IT managers may feel they lose service control and information transparency.
When multiple MSPs use the same cloud software platform, service offerings tend to be too similar, and there are few opportunities to differentiate service value. According to the latest CSO Insights study, only 9% of buyers feel there is significant differentiation from one provider to the next. How can an MSP differentiate and stand out from the competition?
Next-Gen Data Management Is the First Step to Service Differentiation
By using Cohesity next-gen data management platform, MSPs can rely on proven technology to differentiate more effectively. Comprehensive Cohesity-Powered solutions—all delivered as services—make it easy to protect, manage, and derive value from data.
What makes Cohesity data management platform next-gen is its four core tenets: simplicity at scale, Zero Trust security principles, AI-powered insights, and third-party extensibility. The latter capability—third-party extensibility—supports an API-first approach that is important to MSP success.It simplifies the automation of tasks and differentiates managed service offerings to create exceptional customer experiences from the start.
Customize Your Service Management Portal
Customize Your Service Management Portal“From the start” means customizing the MSP service management portal, an essential digital touchpoint for IT organizations. This helps them operate more efficiently and is often the standard by which customers judge MSP service quality.
Cohesity next-gen data management services such as backup and recovery include tools that enable DevOps to customize the service management portal and provide programmatic access to cloud functionality. These tools also facilitate integration with many popular third-party and custom-developed apps as well as support the orchestration of various cloud services.
Below is the list of capabilities within Cohesity’s third-party extensibility tool kit. We encourage you to explore this library of tools, which Cohesity has continually enhanced throughout the years to support the latest software releases:
- White-label the management portal to feature your company logo. Replace or augment the Cohesity logo with your own to prominently display your brand. Strengthening brand awareness is the first step to differentiating your Cohesity-Powered services.
- Alternately, feature your company logo in the VMware Cloud Director tenant portal by simply deploying the Cohesity plugin. Available free of charge, the Cohesity vCD plugin was developed for service providers to benefit their multi-tenant environments and empower customer self-service.
- Use REST APIs to orchestrate and automate your data management operations for Cohesity Helios and Cohesity Clusters. Cohesity supports automated workflows using pre-built API tools that are designed to simplify the cloud programming experience.
- Take advantage of pre-tested integrations and published guidelines for VMware vRealize Automation Suite, Ansible, and ServiceNow. Cross-cloud service compatibility is an area Cohesity continues to invest in to reduce DevOps time.
Best of all, these capabilities are all available and in use today by MSPs such as 11:11 Systems (formerly iland). The company developed its Cloud Console with the Cohesity API tool kit. It’s a proven example of how a customized service portal delivers a better user experience and helps 11:11’s managed services rise above the crowd.
“Cohesity’s third-party extensibility tool kit has enabled us to simplify and automate our portal environment,” says Justin Giardina, Chief Technology Officer at 11:11 Systems.
“Our customers enjoy the ability to control the data management lifecycle from beginning to end with our self-service capabilities. The portal, which has significantly increased customer satisfaction, serves as a crucial digital touchpoint that adds substantial value to our customers.”
A Case Study: 11:11 Systems Cloud powered by Cohesity
11:11 Systems, a global managed infrastructure solutions provider based in New Jersey, took advantage of Cohesity’s third-party extensibility tools to customize its Cloud Console.
To start with, 11:11’s Cloud Console replaced the Cohesity UI with a new background accentuating its own brand. 11:11 also expanded Cohesity’s top-level menu, providing additional value-added functionality to give customers granular control of policies and workflows that can be applied anywhere their data resides.
11:11 uses Cohesity’s extensive REST APIs to simplify the addition of servers and workloads and to orchestrate backup tasks with various VMware apps, such as vDC, vOrgs, and vApps. The result is data protection management that is quick, easy, and complete.
By customizing its service management portal, 11:11 customers can procure, configure, and fully manage various cloud services—from advanced backup to file and object services—with an intuitive single pane of glass.
Benefit from Cohesity’s Third-Party Extensibility Tool Kit
Like 11:11, which successfully differentiated its service value while empowering self-service and enhancing the quality of its customer experience, your organization can make the most of Cohesity’s comprehensive API tool kit to:
- Customize your service portal
- Simplify the consumption of your cloud services
- Enable granular configuration of policies and workflows
Working with Cohesity gives you access to a comprehensive set of tools and an extensive library of step-by-step guides so you can focus more on your core business and winning new customers than spending resources on costly development programs.
Discover more about the Cohesity Service Provider solution.
Learn more about Cohesity Automation or visit Cohesity Developer Portal.
Become Cohesity-Powered to differentiate your value and establish customer preference for your services.
