Bringing Hope to SMB Networks
NETGEAR helps Hopemate standardize their client management platform
- By Richard Jonker
- Dec 01, 2018
Hopemate is a small IT service
provider located in the
Greater Vancouver, Canada,
area that brings IT support
to small businesses in its
community. Founder, Ian Chang, started as
an IT freelancer and eventually decided to
turn his work into a small business. Hopemate
now provides IT integrations, installations
and general troubleshooting services
for their clients.
As Hopemate’s client base grew and expanded
to managing customer networks, it
became a challenge to oversee all the different
sites. Chang knew the key to Hopemate’s
future was to standardize the management
platform. They needed a solution that was
cost effective and consolidated all customer
site interfaces.
Hopemate installed a variety of NETGEAR’s
Insight managed devices (switches,
access points and network storage
devices) for four of his customers. They
consist of businesses in real estate, medical
and printing with 10 to 30 employees.
Immediately following, Chang was able to
remotely manage those networks from the
Insight mobile app and web portal directly
from his office.
The Insight network management app
and portal have made Chang’s job easier,
and more time efficient. He can initially configure
his customers’ device(s) remotely and
later guide his clients through the rest of the
simple setup without having to allocate time
traveling to different locations. Additionally,
he is able to configure through a more advanced
GUIs offsite.
Monitoring and troubleshooting have
improved immensely for Hopemate. Before,
Chang would have to wait for a call from his
customers notifying him that their Wi-Fi was
down, then drive over to troubleshoot. With
the Insight mobile app he receives notifications
when something goes wrong and can
take action anywhere, anytime. Whether it’s
rebooting a device, updating the firmware, or
changing user access, he no longer has to be
onsite to fix the simple problems.
This solution has saved hours of valuable
time. Chang now uses to continue growing
his business. Future Hopemate plans are to
install the NETGEAR Insight Ecosystem
to a few other customers
this year, further expanding
his MSP business.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2018 issue of Security Today.
About the Author
Richard Jonker is the Vice President SMB Product Line Management at NETGEAR.