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.