Is it a worthless gimmick or a smart promotion? You decide: SysFix Group, a managed services provider in the United Kingdom, is offering new customers a free small business server for the duration of their IT contract. This doesn’t exactly qualify as a freemium promotion, since customers have to have at least three computers under a SysFix Group support contract. But the SysFix offer sounds somewhat similar to hardware as a service (HaaS). Hree’s what the free offer covers.
According to SysFix Group’s corporate blog, “the free server allows businesses to share files internally whilst implementing rigorous security measures which protect business critical data to authorised users only. The server also allows VPN connections allowing staff to work from home whilst still having access to company data and resources securely.”
SysFix Group says the free server could also be used as an intrusion detection system, as a proxy server, mail server or backup server.
No doubt, the term “free” can turn heads and attract a crowd. But I do wonder how many small businesses will take SysFix Group up on the offer — especially since many small businesses are shifting those on-premise capabilities (email, backup, etc.) to cloud services. Still, SysFix caught MSPmentor’s attention. And I suspect SysFix will try to put those “free” servers under long-term support contracts, almost akin to a HaaS deal.
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Posted In: EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) | Marketing | Service Level Agreements
Tags: Free hardware | Free Server Promotion | Freemium | Hardware as a Service | SysFix Group
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I think this is a fantastic idea. For a small business like ours who require IT support and are looking to purchase a server, it provides great value for money whilst allowing us to not tie up our cash in equipment that will eventually become worthless due to depreciation.
In respect to cloud computing – The UK infrastructure simply isn’t up to speed to support it. We’ve looked into cloud computing but there is then a single point of failure – the internet connection, and in the UK, our internet speeds aren’t that great. Only a few weeks ago , there was an article showing countries by speed and reliability, the UK was way down the list. Until the UK rolls out a fibre based network, speeds over copper wire just aren’t good enough to work remotely and browse the web and operate SIP telephony.
And of course – Cloud Computing would not give us access to a team of IT engineers to solve our day to day computer problems.
Great post outlining a new service and one that we are keen to look into further.
J
Jack: Thanks for taking the time to share your views. Please keep us posted as you plot your own IT strategies in the UK.
-jp
Joe,
Keep us updated as to the results of this offer. I’m curious how many profitable agreements with small businesses this could result in.
Mike
Interesting idea. Sounds like a great way to at least generate leads on a specific campaign, and with a 2 or 3 year service contract on at least 3 PCs they should certainly break even at the very least.
I hope SysFix leverages this promotion on their other marketing channels to generate buzz amongst their market place.
I also hope that they build in some sort of act now – whether it be limiting this to a 1 month promotion, or the first 100 clients to take up the offer… something to encourage their prospect to take advantage of the offer.
That said, I suppose the inherent risk to putting this timeline on is sounding too gimmicky.
Thoughts?
Dan Goldstein
GMS Live Expert
Mike@2: I will check in with SysFix in a few months to see how the promotion performs.
Dan@4: I like the “available to first 100 customers” limit but I think the soft-sell approach works far more often.
-jp
Very exciting to hear about haas, I know saas, and we use saas (everything these days is via saas and many google services are saas), and our firm also uses Iaas solution via Traffic Squeezer http://www.trafficsqueezer.org. I think haas should be a great cost effective solution.