“We have expanded our service offerings with new and increasingly customized services, which integrate infrastructure monitoring with Centreon. We transitioned from using an in-house open-source Centreon solution to integrating the Centreon MSP solution into our service portfolio, to better support steering committee discussions and communications with general management.”
Nicolas Crozat
Director of Services – Meanquest.
The project in a nutshell
The MSP’s business challenges
- Shorten time to monitoring to focus on generating business KPIs
- Rely on a monitoring tool which can demonstrate compliance with SLAs during steering committees
- Provide SME clients with an advanced monitoring solution
The MSP’s ITOM challenges
- Monitor hybrid infrastructure (private and public cloud services, Office 365, etc.)
- Secure and simplify monitoring deployments
- Automate ticketing and alerting processes
- Future-proof observability capabilities through the adoption of an open and scalable platform
The solution: Centreon MSP Edition. Main benefits:
- Significant time savings deploying monitoring solutions for clients
- Pricing model aligned with the MSP’s business model
- Ability to provide SMEs an enterprise grade monitoring solution as part of an integrated, turnkey service offering
- Dashboards and business reports to support communications with general management during steering committees (MSP offer)
The full story
Meanquest, a trusted IT partner for organizations in French-speaking Switzerland, was always committed to offering clients attentive and high-quality service. By relying on Centreon to enrich their IT monitoring offering, in particular within the managed services portfolio, the Swiss MSP aims to offer the best technology and services at the most efficient cost to support the most current client needs.
MEANQUEST: when IT makes sense
MTF Quadra, a Swiss company founded in 1995, was renamed Meanquest in 2022, becoming an independent MSP after acquiring the MTF Group. Counting on the expertise of a hundred employees, Meanquest supports client digital journeys and helps manage IT infrastructure. The company generates over CHF 20 million (about 19 million euros) in total annual revenues driven by an integrated service portfolio which combines IT consulting (advising, design, and implementation of IT solutions), managed services (IT infrastructure management through a dedicated offer), and the provision of resources (recruitment of qualified IT personnel).
Over the years, the company developed a robust portfolio of managed services and cloud expertise to the benefit of the SMEs and enterprise they serve, most located in French-speaking Switzerland.
The company’s name echoes the quest to find meaning. Clients find meaning through the solutions Meanquest provides them, and for Meanquest employees, meaning is found in the professional enrichment opportunities their employer makes available to them. Nicolas Crozat, Meanquest’s Technical Director and Partner further explains: “We are committed to be a trusted IT partner, providing expertise and services that focus on the latest digital needs and concerns our clients have. In fact, our service portfolio is client-driven, and that’s how we came to evolve our service offerings to include Centreon.”
Tailoring service offers for hybrid and domestic cloud options
Meanquest’s purpose is to ensure organizations remain focused on their core business while they enable them digitally. Meanquest achieves this by focusing on service and client relationship quality as well as maintaining a skilled and highly available team with a proven track record in French-speaking Switzerland. Reflecting their purpose is notably their offer of a domestic cloud. “We’re constantly evolving services to better meet client expectations and new use cases. Currently, demand is surging for cloud and IT hybridization,” mentions Nicolas Crozat. “Our clients are asking for hosting services which are not subjected to the US Cloud Act, they want Switzerland-based datacenters.”
“We have expanded our service offerings with new and increasingly customized services, which integrate infrastructure monitoring with Centreon. We transitioned from using an in-house open-source Centreon solution to integrating the Centreon MSP solution into our service portfolio, to better support steering committee discussions and communications with general management.”
Nicolas Crozat
Director of Services – Meanquest.
Before adopting Centreon MSP, Meanquest had been using Centreon open source internally for nearly 15 years. Three years ago, the company decided to make Centreon available to their clients, within the MSP offering framework, as a standard part of their data center offering, a turnkey IT management solution for SMEs.
“Business expectations have changed, and our clients want to be informed about the availability of their IT services and infrastructure,” explains Nicolas Crozat. “Seeking to develop service offers, we evolved IT monitoring to enable observability as well as visibility over business KPIs. This is what brought us to consider systematically integrating Centreon into client environments.”
Investing efforts on generating KPIs rather than on the solution’s deployment
Meanquest’s teams particularly appreciate Centreon’s advanced Auto-Discovery functions and the Plugin Packs, which are not available in Centreon open source. Such advanced features significantly reduce integration time to the benefit of clients. “Following our transition from Centreon Open Source to Centreon MSP Edition, the technical set up time (installation and configuration) was divided by 10. It’s more time we can focus on value-adding client initiatives, such as developing strategic monitoring and business dashboards,” says Nicolas Crozat.
Centreon dashboards have become essential to following up on client accounts, they are systematically integrated into reports which are discussed during client steering committees. Dashboards are also made accessible through an Internet portal for the majority of Meanquest clients wishing to track monitoring KPIs in a weather forecast format. Moreover, Centreon is interfaced with ITSM solutions such as Managed Engine Service Desk to generate email alerts and automatically create incident tickets. Beyond its addition to the service portfolio, IT monitoring has been integrated as a standard feature of the data center offering and it is also part of steering committee agendas.
“Thanks to Centreon, Meanquest teams can support their discussions on key metrics during client steering committees. This is particularly meaningful for non-IT stakeholders, such as general managers. We’re equipped to respond to the questions of both IT and business managers using Centreon’s reporting and dashboards capabilities. The added value of Centreon MSP Edition: providing clients with a powerful solution that’s also aligned with the MSP business model”
Nicolas Crozat
Director of Services – Meanquest.
Centreon MSP Edition brings the tools Meanquest needs to provide clients with optimized service offerings. This enables SMEs to access a modern and powerful, enterprise grade IT monitoring solution. For Nicolas Crozat, this fact alone highlights the quality of service Meanquest aims to offer clients.
“With Centreon, we’re set to offer high-end functionalities, worthy of large businesses, to our SMB clients so that they benefit from a powerful solution offering granular visibility. We can answer almost any request and even make specific customizations if needed. In addition, Centreon MSP Edition’s usage-based pricing matches our needs and those of our clients. It’s a modern way to consume services, a coherent offer that is aligned with our broader pricing scheme, and this enables us to evolve towards a monitoring as a service model.”
Nicolas Crozat
Director of Services – Meanquest.
To go further
- Peer Insights ebook “Monitoring Anything, Anywhere.”! Discover how Centreon can help you achieve the triple aim of operational excellence. Download our Peer Insights ebook to learn how nine industry leaders are achieving their uptime, efficiency, and performance goals.
- Learn how MSPs around the world, like CTG Luxembourg, Celeste, Rest Solution, ITS Integra, Econocom Luxembourg, Hub One, or NC2 rely on the Centreon solution to guarantee their clients’ digital performance.
- If you’re looking to acquire new IT monitoring capabilities, our peer-informed procurement guide “Aligning IT monitoring capabilities & budget using TCO” will help you to select the IT monitoring solution you need. Download the expert insight.
- SaaS or Self-Hosted Monitoring? If you’d like to conduct a careful TCO assessment, don’t go it alone — read our latest expert content “IT monitoring and TCO: SaaS or self-hosted?” You’ll find some insights as well as a complete list of potential hidden costs to consider, so you can choose a monitoring solution which meets both your expectation and budget.
- Looking to run a deeper analysis to decide between open source or paid IT monitoring? Download the first Expert Insight volume, “IT Monitoring & TCO: Open source or off-the-shelf software? Finding the best option for your organization,” which looks at an IT monitoring solution type’s impact on the TCO, helping you opt for one that is perfectly adapted to your organization.
- Connect IT Monitoring to the rest of your ITOps Stack to get full visibility and prepare for observability – Download our guide
- Contact us for a personalized demo and ask our monitoring experts any questions you may have.
- Unlock the full potential of your MSP Ops with proven strategies and dive into the transformative world of MSPs with our guide “MSP Set for Growth”, a guide for MSPs looking to boost growth and profitability, illustrated with case studies from MSPs relying on Centreon to improve their productivity and profitability. Download the guide.
- Video: Take 2 minutes to explore Centreon MSP Edition, specifically designed for MSPs
- Explore the Centreon State of MSPs and Growth Survey and get invaluable insights from MSPs worldwide as they share their expert insight and experiences. The report uncovers the prevailing trends, the strategies for addressing present challenges, potential growth opportunities and future expectations within the MSP industry. Get the Report now!
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