A Toast to Innovation | Top Improvements for Partners in 2018 | SkyKick

A SkyKick partnership is a two-way relationship, when you become a SkyKick Partner we become your Partner as well. And as your Partner, we’ll do everything we can to help your business succeed.

SkyKick’s 100% partner-only business model means our success is entirely dependent on the success of our Partners. We see our Partners as true collaborators and work with them to innovate across product and business strategy; leading to even greater success in the cloud.

In 2018, this collaborative partnership increased the technical capabilities of our products; improved the user experience of Partners and their customers; and delivered even greater profitability for their Office 365 practice. Here are the top improvements made for 2018:

1. SkyKick Standard Bundle- The SkyKick Standard Bundle offers up to 55% savings off regular prices, substantially increases recurring revenues with Backup and delivers 2X your Office 365 profitability. The bundle allows flexibility to choose Exchange-only or full O365 data protection. Plus, also included in the  bundle is a FREE Email Migration with the #1 MSP-voted tool, to help customers Start Right, and 12 months of Backup for Office 365 to help them Stay Protected.
2. Over 50 Migration Suite enhancements- We are making constant improvements to the SkyKick Migration Suites. A few of the major highlights include an improved Outlook Assistant 7.2 which increases end-user engagement with an improved user interface, provides richer status and troubleshooting information on the client, protects Outlook 2016 from connecting to Office 365 prematurely due to Microsoft Direct Connect, and improves performance with faster communication with the Migration Application.Since the foundational redevelopment of the Migration Dashboard, we continue to expand the transparency, focus, and control for partners. 2018 improvements included more explicit reporting of and troubleshooting for Source-Side Impersonation errors; more dashboard customization options; and expanded areas to edit, update, and test aspects of the migration. All designed to give our Partners continued performance and quality improvements in the #1 MSP-voted Office 365 Migration Platform.
3. Backup of Groups, Teams, and Modern Team Sites- Valuable business data once created through legacy applications, like email and SharePoint Classic Team Sites, is now increasingly being created and shared through new Microsoft apps and services like Office 365 Groups, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint Modern Team Sites. Our Partners are at the cusp of this innovation and we are staying ahead of the puck on innovative collaboration apps and services like Groups, Teams, and Modern Team Sites. These improvements are designed to offer Partners the most comprehensive and easy to use Backup service for Office 365.
4. More security and performance in Cloud Backup- SkyKick Cloud Backup is known for its high performance which is due in part to its ability to address typical infrastructure limitations, e.g. throttling in SharePoint Online. SkyKick has developed an innovative approach (Azure Active Directory Security Groups) to deliver the highest performance without impacting industry security benchmarks like Microsoft’s Office 365 security score.
5. ConnectWise Manage integration- SkyKick developed an integration between Cloud Backup and ConnectWise Manage. The initial release streamlines billing and invoicing for MSPs who use ConnectWise Manage as their PSA tool. We have also built a similar integration for Migration invoicing and are currently working to expand our integration between our platform and ConnectWise Manage.
6. Backup with Point-in-Time and Cross-Mailbox Restore- We are committed to prioritizing and executing to the backup and restore scenarios that help our Partners differentiate and become more successful. In response to our partners, Cloud Backup has expanded its restore scenarios to include cross-mailbox restore and point-in-time restore.
7. Out-of-the-box compliance (GDPR)- Earlier in the year, SkyKick announced accelerated compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy regulations. As the data processor, SkyKick takes on the lion’s share of the compliance burden, so cloud IT Partners wrestling with their own GDPR compliance have one less thing to worry about and can instead focus on building a more profitable cloud business.
8. Improved Partner-branded Cloud Backup self-service portal option- The improved, partner-branded Cloud Backup self-service portal option provides partners with the best of both worlds. Using a simple form on the SkyKick Partner Portal, Partners can now extend their presence and brand within the customer self-service portal. This promotes greater customer retention, while reducing operational costs, resulting in increased profitability.
9. Expanded customer-facing marketing collateral- While SkyKick is 100% to-partner, we continue to expand our marketing materials and resources to help our partners sell to their customers. We offer a growing number of white label Migration and Cloud Backup materials to help Partners reach, inform, and engage their customers.
10. More localization across products and support- In 2018, the SkyKick end-user experience was expanded from seven to nine languages; the majority of the Migration Suites and Cloud Backup Partner experience was localized in German and Japanese. Additionally, we have added personnel across multiple teams and languages to our Amsterdam office to further empower our Partners in EMEA.

Looking forward to 2019

As we close out 2018, we are thankful for our 20,000+ partners, and look forward to all that we will accomplish together in 2019.