Xpand IT stretches its offering with Kaseya

As is typical with many success stories in the IT world, Xpand IT constantly seeks to improve its service and keep its 100% client retention reputation. Part of this quest led to Xpand IT partnering with Kaseya, the world's leading automated managed services software provider.

“We have been looking at and working with other systems in the past, but none of them tie everything together the way Kaseya's offering does. A strong local presence was the clincher for us. We could ask questions and see exactly how Kaseya would work in our environment,” says co-founder and Managing Director Steven Preston.

Xpand IT was established in 2001 by Preston and his colleague Brett Scott, with a primary focus on ad hoc projects that generated the members a student income while studying. In February 2007, the regularity of these ad hoc projects had developed into a sustainable business. The members left their respective employment to pursue Xpand IT full time.

It is this combination of entrepreneurial flair, innovation and sound business practice that has made Xpand IT a success, as it aligns itself with the current environment and anticipates future changes and technologies.

The company has never lost a client and is now a partner of Dell, Thawte and Internet Solutions, although it does support all hardware and software.

According to Preston, the decision to use Kaseya will have a positive impact on customer experience. “It allows us to automate what can be automated, reducing costs to customers and freeing technicians up to deal with major issues or installations. Seeking customer delight is a core part of what our business is about and Kaseya will help us with that.”

Brett Scott, co-director and founder of Xpand IT, spent time working for Discovery Health before dedicating his time to Xpand IT, and is adamant about the cost of downtime. “This is what Kaseya will help prevent,” he says. “With Discovery, downtime costs millions an hour. Smaller companies may not be losing quite so much when their systems fail, but it is still a cost and massively harmful to any business. We at Xpand IT get that and we do everything we can to keep clients up and running through our partnerships and technical staff. With Kaseya, we can see that there will be an enormous cost and time saving in many of these processes.”

Xpand IT's customer base is largely in the SME space, although it does have very large corporate clients, one of which is in the banking industry.

“Kaseya will enable us to grow rapidly - we can comfortably take on new clients knowing that the bulk of processes will be automated efficiently,” says Preston.

“Kaseya is the fastest growing and most widely used IT automation platform in South Africa as both managed services providers and corporate clients take advantage of the benefits of its single management platform to automate the service requirements of their IT assets. Kaseya will be exhibiting all its products at SMEXA this year,” says Jacques van de Merwe, Regional Sales Manager xSP at Kaseya South Africa.

The 2nd annual IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition (SMEXA), taking place from 3-4 August 2010 at The Forum, is a high-profile two-day conference and exhibition that brings together local and international IT service management professionals, practitioners, experts and analysts to share their experiences as well as the latest tools and techniques focusing on routes to recovery through IT service management strategies and technology. Book your seat at http://www.smexa.co.za.