We see all kinds of opportunities at JumpCloud for managed service providers to help organizations be more secure, efficient, and connected. With the Partner Program growing in size and influence, we’d like to highlight some Partners in particular that can help our customers and the IT community at large move cloud-forward.
- JumpCloud Partner: Employee Zero
- CEO: James Martin
- Location: Leicester, Leicestershire, UK
- Website: https://employeezero.co.uk/
- Area of Expertise: Developing security-first systems
- Ideal Customer: Cloud-forward customers using Mac and iOS
Can you tell us about your business? When and how did you get started?
James: We were established just over four years ago, so we are still quite a young and vibrant company. We started primarily by providing consulting services and deployment of Mac and iOS devices in businesses that typically use Windows. Very early on, we realized that Apple’s own offerings for directory services wasn’t really an enterprise solution, and that’s how we found JumpCloud. From there, we’ve slowly been able to build a collection of products and services that really sing together and allow for cross-platform management in all sorts of verticals. We’ve got clients in education, manufacturing, retail, and so on.
What would you say is your primary area of expertise?
James: We’re great at deploying systems and services which have a security-first mindset. We approach any problem with security as the #1 standpoint, and we introduce layers of security where there traditionally weren’t any. With modern cloud-based services and locking down directories and accounts with multi-factor authentication, hardware-based firewalls, managed desktop antivirus, and DNS-based services, you can now run a small or medium sized business and benefit from enterprise-grade security. That’s where we want to have all of our clients.
Who are your ideal customers and why do they choose to work with you?
James: We prefer to work for customers who use Mac and iOS, but we certainly have a good crossover with clients who use both Mac and Windows. We now consider taking on clients who primarily use Windows with a smaller Apple offering, as we feel we can add a lot of value to solutions where Macs currently sit outside of the infrastructure. So we tend to be successful winning multi-platform clients because we can do both, and we have a forward-thinking, cloud-first viewpoint. Our ideal customer is a forward-thinking company as well who are looking to improve and invest in making their IT better on an ongoing basis.
Can you share more about the services you offer?
James: We offer project-based work and ongoing managed service. With our contacted clients, we manage their whole IT from the endpoints through to cloud services, via our 24/hr help desk. So whenever one of our clients calls now, whether they’re in New York City or Sydney, Australia, there is an Apple-certified engineer at the other end of the phone. We don’t know of anyone else in the world doing that.
JumpCloud fits absolutely perfectly within our cloud-first, brand-agnostic approach. We use a lot of Cisco Meraki, and we found that by combining those products and services with JumpCloud, we can deploy a cloud-based directory system very, very easily on Mac, PC, and even Linux devices. We can also provide very fast, very secure networks and even manage those devices using MDM, pushing out software updates, profiles, and so forth.
What’s the one piece of security advice you give every client?
James: I would say everything should have security by design. Every service and every piece of hardware you onboard should have security at the core. With that mindset, you should have layers of security rather than just desktop antivirus.
The IT landscape is changing. What should organizations be thinking about?
James: For us specifically, we started off solely as Apple, but we found very quickly that you need a certain level of knowledge for integration purposes. You need to know how to navigate Active Directory, Windows Sharepoints, etc., so we didn’t see the point in limiting our client base to just Mac and iOS businesses. In the real world, you have to appreciate the fact that businesses use different types of operating systems for different reasons. We moved to that mentality very quickly, but we do prefer the Apple side of things. We think that in 2018 especially, you can secure Macs very easily and efficiently to the point where it’s actually cheaper to deploy Macs with a combination of cloud services than it is to deploy traditional Windows infrastructure.
I think the mindset of paying for services rather than investing in physical bits of hardware is something that’s slowly changing for the better, and we would much prefer to see a client take up a service like JumpCloud and pay a monthly fee than spend several thousand on a physical server that they have to keep powered on with a UPS, backup, and so on. It’s been a shift that’s been happening for a while, but I think companies are becoming more and more willing to listen to that. So, I would say forget on-premises anything. Just have super secure, super fast networks and endpoints. Everything else should be in the cloud.
Why did you partner with JumpCloud?
James: I think we came across JumpCloud in 2015 because we needed to move away from traditional directory systems to cross-platform management. JumpCloud is a very unique product out there. The people at JumpCloud have such a willingness to listen to the various companies implementing these services on behalf of your end customers. That is so refreshing in our industry—to work with a partner that will listen to the feedback that we’re giving and act upon it. We’ve got a hunger to work with JumpCloud because of that, and we’re really excited to see where the product is going from here on out. Just since we’ve started working together, the product has developed immensely.
Next Steps
Learn more about Employee Zero by visiting their website. If you’re interested in seeing other use cases for Directory-as-a-Service, take a look at these case studies, and then check out our whitepaper on the 5 Reasons Why MSPs Should Use Cloud IAM.
About JumpCloud’s Partner Program
JumpCloud’s Partner Program empowers IT Service Providers with central identity management from the cloud. Fine-tuned for MSPs with cloud security offerings or clients transitioning to the cloud, Directory-as-a-Service can be easily bundled at the center of any product stack to make your business, and your clients’ businesses, as efficient and scalable as possible. Make Work Happen™ for your clients while improving your bottom line.
Get started with JumpCloud today.