B-Logic is an IT outsourcing and service management specialist, working out of a headquarters in Cape Town and a new branch in Johannesburg.
Founded in 2004, B-Logic was one of the first companies in South Africa to deliver cloud-based remote data backup and recovery and has since expanded to provide a full IT managed service to clients in South Africa, Africa and the British Isles.
In just two years, B-Logic has grown the amount of data protected by Redstor to more than 125TB. Clients range from big names in the production, hospitality and hotel industry to vineyards, wineries, large retailers, wholesalers and many more.
Redstor is the leading cloud-based data management and protection service for B-Logic.
Glen Janjetich, Service Transition & Risk Manager at B-Logic, values Redstor so highly because it:
- Provides versatile and flexible protection for customer data in Microsoft 365 and on-premises – without the need for hardware to buy, administer or manage;
- Guarantees recovery from a ransomware attack with an offsite solution that is isolated from the live network;
- Makes the provision and management of all customer data simple and easy via a single app;
- Eradicates the need to send engineers onsite – an unwelcome necessity for solutions with an appliance approach or tape library, particularly during a pandemic; and
- Is easy to demonstrate to customers, who quickly see the benefits.
Challenges
- Accelerating growth by attracting and converting customers quickly;
- Obligation to protect customer data from threat of ransomware;
- Avoiding convoluted invoicing arising out of complicated commercial models; and
- How to minimise management overheads.
Solutions
- A solution that you can quickly demonstrate and trial for free, and swiftly convince non-technical decision-makers it offers great value;
- Data encrypted at source, in transit and at rest – backups checked for malware and not connected to live environment;
- Easily provision additional capacity, based purely on data volume, providing total visibility of cost for everyone; and
- Simplified and centralised management and protection of all customer data – set up in a few clicks.
Benefits
- Streamlined sales process, fast and easy protection for customers and quicker time to value;
- Guarantee ransomware recovery and comply with regulations with isolated, offsite protection;
- Ability to scale infinitely, budget easily and immediately demonstrate value with reduced recovery times, cost-effective DR and instant access to archived data; and
- Remotely and intuitively manage all client data quickly and easily from single pane of glass – no need for technical personnel to visit sites.
1. The broadest coverage through a single app
B-Logic values the increased revenue opportunities that arise out of being able to manage and protect customer data in the broadest range of environments – all through a single app.
Using a single provider to protect SaaS and infrastructure data also reduces complexity and avoids compatibility challenges.
Janjetich said: “We can be standardised with Redstor. There’s one set of training whether we are protecting Microsoft 365 or infrastructure.
“Redstor is also flexible, for example, in the M365 backup space: with other products you can generally only backup all mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams or nothing – and that can mean unnecessary expenditure for the client. With Redstor, we can select only the mailboxes they want protecting – and charging per user makes Redstor’s pricing model and margins more favourable, especially when it comes to smaller customers.
“The option to choose retention periods is also a big bonus. Instead of 28 days or limitation from hardware storage availability, we say we can do a year as a basic minimum, or retain a financial company’s data for four or five years if they require that.”
B-Logic protects all the M365 data their clients value, whether it’s in OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange, Teams or OneNote.
Janjetich said: “For new deployments or prospective clients, once we deploy Redstor on a proof-of-concept basis, at no charge to the client, I can take a screenshot or pull a report and give it to a client and show them this is what we are protecting, how much we need to backup and this is how much we will invoice you.
“We had some clients whose previous backup service did not protect Teams as part of their M365 suite backups. When we told them we can now backup and restore Teams, which they use extensively, that gave them a lot of peace of mind. They get the value of the extra coverage, which we offer for the same price or less than competitors.”
2. Purpose built for service provision
Being able to manage multiple customers through a single, intuitive, cloud-native app that scales effortlessly reduces B-Logic’s overheads.
Redstor’s multi-tenanted platform features extensive reporting, while user access management, secured by the latest multi-factor authentication technology, enables B-Logic to customise and control who has access to data.
Janjetich said: “I don’t like giving access to anyone who has not done their training or already done a restore. With Redstor, I have full control. Now I can give granular permissions, which is perfect. Our team really likes the single sign-on also.
“In the past, we used to have to create single log-in users just to manage a 365 account, which is very cumbersome. We brought this to Redstor’s attention, and they listened and took the feedback seriously. Now that is no longer the case. Deploying 365 protection takes no longer than 15 minutes rather than a couple of hours.”
“Redstor sometimes gives us referrals – small MSPs. When one wants to use our system, we can safely give them the reins. That also gives them the opportunity and flexibility to sell the product and, as a bigger MSP, we get some passive income.
“Some clients with in-house IT also want to manage their own backups through us. We do the training with them and they can log tickets with us if they need us to provide extra support.
“The versatility in how we can sell, deploy and manage Redstor is probably the biggest value add for us.
“We have to demonstrate to the client what we are protecting and Redstor shows the status of what is being protected. That is made easy with the many report types to choose from. For instance, we can demonstrate how many times malware detection has run, what it has detected and the status of all backups.”
3. Revenue from day one
Around 85% of B-Logic clients have migrated over to Redstor – and most of the data has been backed up from infrastructure.
The ability to start protecting clients, in minutes, with zero upfront cost has proved a huge attraction.
Janjetich said: “We are a company that likes to innovate so we do a lot of proof of concepts to see who is on point, who is the best data management and protection vendor to go with – and the overall feeling is that Redstor delivers a totally reliable service. Risk is uncertainty and Redstor mitigates a lot of risk with its stable and flexible product set; whether it’s cloud backups or local backups, I don’t have to worry.”
New clients typically see the value right away because the reporting is easy and displayed simply.
"If they’re not yet totally sure, we do a two-week POC – free of charge. Ten out of 10 times that is all that is needed to convince a client. I have not had a single occasion where we’ve failed to make a sale after running a POC.
“I am very pedantic about security. The first thing I look at is the backups to see where a client is unprotected and then we run risks for it.
“While onboarding a new client recently, we identified a critical risk around a server that did not have backups at all. If it had gone down, the client’s entire business would have gone down because all roles or key applications were on that server.
“But it was simply a case of quickly logging onto the server and deploying Redstor in a matter of minutes because it’s so easy to do.”
“I said: ‘We’re seeding your data. Give us two or three hours and you’ll be protected.’ They were so ecstatic that we could react so fast and so easily and that we could show them that their data had been backed up successfully. Giving them that peace of mind was amazing. It was lucky we did deploy, because, a week later, the server crashed and we were able to recover the server successfully from backups.”
4. Increased growth and high customer retention
Simple, predictable pricing and strong customer satisfaction ensures B-Logic benefits from high customer retention, while sales and marketing enablement helps attract new customers.
Janjetich said: “With Redstor’s per-GB pricing model, clients only pay for what they are using. When I get that invoice at the end of the month and do my recon to compare our calculations with what we’re being billed for, it’s so easy to scan through it. We just update our agreements and send out our invoices to our clients. Simple and easy.”
“We are selling Redstor protection like hot cakes because it’s affordable to the client. The multiple features and breadth of protection is a big plus and I love the automation, reporting and attention to detail. Clients get a lot more for their money – and there’s less anxiety for us too because we know that a customer does not just have part of their data backed up in a product, the full suite is backed up too. That gives us a lot more peace of mind as an MSP.
5. Total partner experience
Hyper-personalised sales and marketing tools, a dedicated Redstor partner community and marketing resources are all helping B-Logic attract business.
Janjetich said: “When we first looked at Redstor, the customer service was the biggest thing we wanted to find value in, because we weren’t getting that from our previous provider.
“Since we started working with the sales, technical and marketing teams at Redstor two years ago, it has been beautiful. You ask them a question and they will do everything to help – even hold your hand through the whole process – and the RedTribe community for Redstor customers is awesome. I have access to a lot of other forums, but RedTribe stands out for being so interactive. It takes feedback on board and responds very quickly.”
6. Customers protected against risk, automatically
The security of client data is always uppermost in B-Logic’s thinking so the ability to automatically highlight data risks and protect customers against malware with Redstor’s smart data management platform is highly valued.
Redstor guarantees ransomware recovery with offsite, isolated protection and allows customers to detect, isolate and act on threats within backup data using artificial intelligence.
Janjetich said: “Clients often aren’t aware that malware can lay undetected in backups or that they subsequently restore malware in the event of an issue.
“Now we can offer an additional layer of protection in their backup environment and that goes down well with clients. It’s decently priced and is particularly affordable for M365 data. We say at least protect your key servers with this product and if you can see the value, then we can move on.
“The big thing for us is security and we know Redstor feels the same way and has complied with GDPR and POPI.”
7. A solution that ends downtime
In the event of an issue, Redstor’s pioneering InstantData technology intelligently prioritises recoveries and enables customers to access data in seconds, while the full recovery continues in the background.
Janjetich said: “InstantData is a good selling point and very easy for our technicians to use.
“We also recommend that clients have a NAS onsite where we can have a local copy (which Redstor is happy to provide free of charge), just to help speed up a repair should the client have bad internet lines.
“Whatever a customer has had before, Redstor has been able to outperform that in terms of features and pricing.
“Put simply, Redstor offers an excellent client-centric service – right the way through from the sales team, service management to the marketing department. We know Redstor moves very quickly on any feedback we give – and we see an outcome.”
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