Altitude Integrations is a cloud-forward managed service provider (MSP) with more than 200 clients around the country. Brett Ramberg and Toby Yoder — the organization’s co-CEOs — use the JumpCloud Directory Platform to help clients reduce or eliminate on-prem infrastructure and to serve clients no matter where they’re located.
- Organization: Altitude Integrations
- Location: Niwot, Colorado
- Problem: Remote administration for dispersed clients
- Goal: Expand geographic reach with cloud services
Background
In the 11 years that Altitude Integrations has served its clients, the organization has been cloud-forward. In recent years, Ramberg and Yoder said they’ve seen a marked uptick in the number of organizations that depend upon cloud-based services come to them. More than 95% of Altitude Integration’s book of business is serverless now.
“We’re seeing a lot of younger companies, up-and-coming companies, that have complete SaaS environments,” Ramberg said. “We’re also starting to see a lot of the older organizations being forced to transition their environments into these SaaS environments.”
Their goal is to support those organizations on their digital transformation journey, and to do so securely.
Challenges
The Altitude Integration team strives to be a provider that serves organizations no matter what technology they have in their environment, including Mac and Windows devices, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, single sign-on (SSO) applications, AWS or Azure, and other networks and servers. Ramberg said they don’t want to hold their clients back from picking the technology that works best for their unique environments.
“We pride ourselves on being flexible and true partners to the organizations we serve,” Ramberg said. “Many industries focus on standardization, but I think that holds organizations back from growing and using new technology.”
Solution
That’s why the Altitude Integrations team uses the JumpCloud Directory Platform, which is an open directory platform for secure, frictionless access from any device to any resource — regardless of location.
“As a modern, cloud-focused MSP, we look for the best-in-breed platform that will be beneficial to us and our clients,” Ramberg said. “There are three boxes we need to check: Is the platform secure? Does it create efficiencies for our clients? Does it reduce costs?”
JumpCloud checks all three boxes for their clients. When Ramberg calculated the approximate annualized cost for an organization with 200 employees, 50% remote workforce, Mac and Windows devices, and one office, he found that JumpCloud was about one-fifth of the cost of Active Directory and Okta.
JumpCloud: $37,264
Active Directory + Okta: $190,600
- CapEx: $2,000
- Licensing: $3,600
- Security: $25,000
- SSO and identity/credential management: $36,000
- MDM: $24,000
- Maintenance and administration: $90,000
Using JumpCloud, the Altitude Integrations team reduces costs for their clients. Plus, because JumpCloud provides seamless user access regardless of location, they’ve also seen a decrease in password reset tickets of about 75% when they transition clients from Active Directory to JumpCloud.
They provide clients with a comprehensive solution to provision and manage user devices, as well as connect users to their SSO applications, productivity suites, Wi-Fi networks via cloud RADIUS, and more. Furthermore, their clients don’t need to worry about upfront CapEx costs like servers or the associated security and maintenance costs either.
They bundle JumpCloud in a master services agreement for their clients, which includes identity, access, and device security, in addition to dedicated hours of support service. They manage all of their client organizations from JumpCloud’s Multi-Tenant Portal (MTP), which provides a centralized dashboard where MSPs can view and manage each client instance.
“We use the MTP to have all our clients in one pane of glass and centrally manage them,” Ramberg said. “With JumpCloud, you don’t need a VPN to deploy policies or manage access in each environment, and that’s huge for us and for our clients, too.”
“To have a single cloud console that we can access in any browser is amazing.”
— Brett Ramberg, Co-CEO at Altitude Integrations
The team can quickly provision and deprovision users with group-based workflows in the web-based console, as well as one-click user suspension, which revokes a user’s access across all their JumpCloud-connected resources immediately.
“In JumpCloud, we can remove or suspend their access to everything with one click,” Ramberg said. “It’s a simple but massively impactful security feature in operating a business day to day.”
The team monitors admin activity, as well as user activity and device health, with JumpCloud’s Directory and System Insights features. Directory Insights provides visibility across user and admin events, while System Insights returns telemetry about devices’ asset, security and configuration data. In particular, they monitor admin events such as user suspension, creation, and deletion.
“Directory Insights has been really good for us with our customers,” Ramberg said. “We can give them really insightful information they need about their business.”
Implementation
The Altitude Integrations team creates new users in JumpCloud and federates identities to connected resources. They also prepare devices for clients using JumpCloud’s system agent. Once the agent is installed, they deploy a proprietary set of templated policies and custom commands to configure and secure each device. They send the pre-provisioned devices to clients, and those devices are ready to go as soon as they arrive.
Another key driver for many clients is web application SSO, so they provision users to all their SAML and LDAP applications via JumpCloud and ensure they can login with one set of secure credentials.
Although the cloud RADIUS feature has been less relevant amid the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders, they plan for all their clients to use it for secure Wi-Fi access as they return to their offices.
“RADIUS is amazing,” Ramberg said. “We’re going to make it mandatory for our clients. When people start coming back into offices — and they will — it will be just as important then as it was before.”
The Result
Altitude Integrations has an expanding client base, including one with offices up and down the East Coast. They’ve been able to extend their geographical reach using JumpCloud and other cloud tools.
“We’re starting to see an influx of clients reach out to us from all over the country because we are cloud-born, and it’s natural for us to work with them. Some of these organizations aren’t going to go back to a single office. They’re going to stay fragmented, but we’re set up to be able to help them.”
— Brett Ramberg, Co-CEO at Altitude Integrations
Added Yoder: “There’s not much we can’t do virtually these days. JumpCloud has enabled us to expand as an MSP. It’s a huge win for us.”
Learn More
The JumpCloud Directory Platform is a comprehensive platform to securely manage user identities, resource access, and devices. JumpCloud offers a Partner program for MSPs and resellers, including competitive margins and co-marketing opportunities. Read about how to amplify your managed services business.