NTRglobal: Five Moves Worth Watching
I spent some time on the phone Sept. 17 with Andrew Harsch, VP of marketing for NTRglobal. The company, which specializes in remote support and remote control software, announced a major move in the government vertical this week. But I wanted to ask Harsch a range of questions about NTRglobal’s partner strategy — both with MSPs and with peer software providers. Here are five takeaways from the discussion.
1. Existing software relationships: NTRglobal works closely with ConnectWise and N-able on product integration efforts. Might there be room for NTRglobal to work more closely with additional PSA (professional services automation) and RMM (remote monitoring and management) tools? The short answer is stay tuned, but Harsh concedes the effort may involve coopetition — both cooperating and competing with some RMM tool makers.
2. Going Government: In case you missed the news, NTRglobal has qualified for a five-year General Services Administration (GSA) Information Technology (IT) Contract. Also known as Schedule 70, the contract helps government customers to more easily purchase IT products and services at www.gsa.gov.
Getting on the Schedule 70 is sort of like scoring shelf space at Best Buy: It doesn’t guarantee people are going to buy your product, but you’re suddenly on a shortlist of options that some people may otherwise have overlooked.
3. Franchises Take A Look: I can’t go into details yet, but it sounds like a major IT services franchise is going to shake hands with NTRglobal very soon. Stay tuned.
4. Global Play: NTRglobal is headquarted in Barcelona, Spain — giving the company solid footing in Europe. Plus the product is localized for multiple regions. The company has a growing footprint in North America and an office in Dallas. And Harsch mentions NTRglobal wants to continue partnering closely with peer software companies — ConnectWise and N-able are mentioned again –to grow business in such regions as Australia.
5. Going Virtual: Watch for NTRglobal to launch a virtual appliance solution this fall.
Next moves: Ultimately, I’m curious to see how NTRglobal practices coopetition in the MSP software market. Former Novell CEO Ray Noorda coined the phrase coopetition to describe organizations that need to work together on some fronts but compete on others. A prime example would be Microsoft and Oracle. We’ll be watching to see how NTRglobal practices that strategy with software peers.
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how about they do something simple… Make it easier to connect to clients.
Currently your options stink.
-Send client an email and hope it doesnt get spam blocked.
-Send your client to a webpage with a connect button – If you have 10 techs who knows which tech gets the client even though you are OTP with them.
-send client to ridiculous url like ntrsupport.com/[email protected]
At which point you stil dont have a chat window open with them.
Just a thought.
Also the connectwise integration is pretty much usless as you MUST do it in a certain order or it doesnt connect the session to the ticket.
Yan: Thanks for taking the time to write.
Readers: Tough crowd this week on MSPmentor… But we do appreciate the reader comments. Next week, we’ll move onto some topics that generate a bit less debate … like Health Care Reform.
Kidding aside, I caution readers to do their homework, as experiences will certainly vary from person to person. And I also caution against blanket statements where readers suggest one solution is all good and another solution is all bad.
There’s a reason why many of the MSP software provides we cover are growing: MSPs generally like their technology — though individual preferences (like Nissan vs. Honda or Ford vs. GM) will certainly vary.
Long live competition.
Rough morning. lol. It wasnt meant to be anti NTR. I’m a customer. I dropped Logmein rescue for them. They are a cool company and support has been good. It just needs some refinement. It feels fragmented between the website and the installable client. But I suppose this is not the place for such discussion.
Great blog, thanks 🙂
Thanks for the comments, we will have to do a better job on our on boarding process and I will be calling you direct to make sure we have things corrected.
We thought we had things pretty well covered offering 6 different methods of connection; chat, email signature button, link via email, session code, Installable Remote Control (IRC), Direct Support from Application (DSA)
• On the email front, while we can’t solve the spam issue, we usually instruct people to use this option when setting up a scheduled support session. You can create the session code and send via email or calendar update.
• Our solution is designed to support multiple operators with their own unique chat buttons. Here is an example of a customer doing just this. Click here to see how Dakota Central Telecommunications utilizes this feature; http://www.daktel.com and you will see their online internet support button, click it and you can then see all the individual operators, whether they are online or not. These chats then go directly to that particular operator. You can also have these operators share licenses with their own unique IDs and logins (great for tracking and reducing license expense if everyone is not logged on at the same time).
• On the URL destination for the session code. We hear you and with NTRsupport Pro we have simplified this with http://www.readyforsupport.com. We are working to improve the usability on NTRsupport Ultimate. With our customization capabilities, many customers choose to integrate the connections via support button into their own sites vs sending people to NTRglobal.
• On the ConnectWise integration; yes, you do follow certain steps right now in phase one; this will get better and with more capabilities in the future.
Thanks for feedback
Andrew Harsch
VP Marketing
NTRglobal
Being an NTR customer I can see Yan’s issues. Its a good product, but improving the annoyances he mentioned would make it great. I came from logmein which did show more maturity. But I guess the most important thing is NTR are not shut away and do listen to the customer base. Its just part B of implementing what’s been heard that will deliver on expectations.
Yan@4: This is the place for open discussion. But we also check the comment board regularly to ensure the comment posts are legitimate.
Andrew, Martyn: Thanks for adding your additional perspectives.
-jp
I’ve used NTR and LMI Rescue in the past, and they are probably the nmost advanced tools on the market for remote support. However, you guys (addressed to Andrew Harsch) should consider reducing the price. I recently signed up for Techinline (http://www.techinline.com) which is a fraction of the NTR Ultimate product, although obviously not as fully featured. LMI made a recent reduction (LMI Central), when will you guys do so?
Thanks Kevin for the nice compliment.
Sorry to have lost you as a customer.
For everyone else, we recently launched NTRsupport Pro which is perfect for smaller IT shops. It has a slick new UI, all the same great remote control features, top of the line security and priced to move at $588 per year. This is ideal for someone looking for 1-3 seats. We are getting a lot of great feedback from users. Take it for a test drive at http://www.ntrsupportpro.com
NTRsupport Ultimate is perfect if you want to integrate, customize and really extend the capabilities of your remote support. Supporting the medical vertical for example? You will really want the permission based system, application selection and session recording and audit trail. A lot of other great features to enhance your service capabilities. Send me a note and we will get you a good package. http://www.ntrglobal.com/ntrsupport/en-US/buy-remote-support-software.asp
I have been using remote desktop from http://www.proxynetworks.com and I have absolutely no complaints. That said, I may give this a look just to see what the other guys are up to..Ya never know what you may be missing out on unless you look…
Hi Mikey,
Can you disclose whether you’re associated with Proxynetworks? Or are you an MSP?
-jp