Sure, N-able provided a look at its product roadmap last
week during its partner summit in Scottsdale, Ariz. And MSPs were generally
excited about the mobile managed services that are coming down the road. But
one of the big benefits that is coming wasn’t really part of the roadmap at
all.
N-able’s Robert Grapes announced two N-able Runbooks, or
recipe books for providing managed services to customers. One of the run books
is a generic one, offered to IT solution providers who are interested in
becoming MSPs. It explains the difference, for example, between a NOC and a
service desk.
The second Runbook is for N-able managed services partners
and is intended to be a wiki-style guide to putting together services for
customers. It defines the processes of deploying and configuring MSP service
delivery tools. Its context sensitive design provides MSPs with the content
they need at the moment and extracts information about their existing client
base.
The Runbook is intended to help MSPs optimize their
operations and apply in depth network maintenance and practices to relevant
devices and applications, according to Robert Grapes, director of product
marketing and management at N-able, who briefed MSPs on the new tool during the
N-able Partner Summit last week.
“All through the Runbook we are going to define processes
that you can automate,” he said. “We’ll mark tasks so it drives automation
policy through N-central.” That’s key to the N-able message during this year’s conference
when executives introduced tools for automation and encouraged partners to
increase their efficiency and profitability by employing the enhanced
automation tools.
For instance, the Runbook offers help with use-case oriented
reporting in terms of offering assessments on a monthly and quarterly basis as
well as tactical scenarios. In addition, partners can add to the wiki-like
Runbook, sharing generic procedures with their peers.
The technical “book” will be available from the menus
selection of partners’ N-central installation.
Managed Services 
