The Light is a managed service provider (MSP) that provides IT support to small and medium-sized business (SMB) clients — companies that typically have 15 to 150 users. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in London, The Light takes a holistic view of how IT infrastructure impacts each client’s entire organization by partnering with SMBs to provide day-to-day support, security, and strategy.
Equipping SMB clients with IT solutions that make life easier while setting up to scale
In the late 1990s, Chris Pearson, CEO and co-founder of The Light, found himself working as the first and only IT manager at a brand consultancy in London. At the time, the company had just two computers and hired Pearson to manage them.
“The role wasn’t sufficient or big enough; it was just dial-up internet and various other bits,” Pearson says. “It became clear to me that you could do something like this for lots of other companies at the same time.”
This is where the idea for The Light was born. More than 20 years later, the company is still providing managed services from its central London headquarters.
As one of its goals, The Light aims to bring clients to the cutting edge of technology. By equipping clients with the latest tools on the market — scalable tools that make life easier — companies are able to focus more on their core competencies instead of running into IT issues and addressing them over and over again.
“We find that some clients have a great internal ops guy who makes all the decisions about what systems to deploy, but then as they get bigger, they’ve just got too many plates to spin. Our job is to be able to seamlessly move in, help them out by driving and implementing an IT strategy that helps them achieve their business goals,” Pearson explains. “If you’re looking to be more secure and more efficient and you want to work with 21st-century tools, then work with The Light.”
For the most part, The Light’s bread and butter is working with owner-led agencies. However, this territory is not without its challenges.
“The problem is that most agencies that get to about 20 employees now get bought by one of the big boys, and so the relationship gets taken out of your hands,” Pearson explains. “Most of the people we work with, we work with for a number of years. But sometimes after an acquisition, those decisions aren’t in the owner’s hands. So, finding platforms and technologies that allow for rapid deployment and rapid onboarding has become very crucial for what we do. If someone sells or they merge or whatever, then we can then rapidly offboard.”
According to Pearson, The Light is on pace to double in size this year. From there, he plans to start rapidly scaling the company. To do that, he’s always on the lookout for tools that enable his team to work more efficiently while providing better service.
Using JumpCloud to onboard clients quickly and cover more ground
Since more than 50% of The Light’s clients are Mac shops, Pearson and his team were looking for a platform that would enable them to control Mac devices in a directory system.
After searching for a solution to this problem on Google, Pearson came across several options, including JumpCloud. Liking what he saw, Pearson joined the JumpCloud partner network and hasn’t looked back since.
“We’ve been a JumpCloud partner for more than five years,” he continues. “JumpCloud has opened our minds. We don’t have to take control of the whole environment; we just have to link parts of the environment to provide better service. With JumpCloud, we can guide our clients’ IT strategy and put things in place that let them seamlessly scale their businesses.”
Becoming an extension of their clients’ teams
The Light works with innovative, smart companies that move quickly and do great work. As a powerful device and identity management solution, JumpCloud helps the MSP fulfill its mission to provide exceptional service to clients.
Increased efficiency and employee engagement
With JumpCloud as its device and identity management solution, The Light is able to operate much more efficiently. In addition to JumpCloud’s feature-rich nature, this can be attributed to the fact that the team really enjoys using the platform.
“People who work at The Light are really excited by JumpCloud because of the quality of the tool,” Pearson says. “For the first time in a long time, they were like ‘Wow, this is great!’ after we rolled it out. The world of MSPs has been pretty boring, and now there’s actually some great technology out there. It’s got our team excited, and it’s simplified the experience for our clients.”
With JumpCloud simplifying device management, The Light is able to serve more clients with fewer resources.
“Quite simply, JumpCloud lets us manage more end users and more devices with fewer people,” Pearson explains.
Improving security with single sign-on
Currently, The Light is in the process of strengthening its clients’ security posture using JumpCloud Single Sign-On.
“It’s a pretty big deal to say, ‘Okay, forget about Google, we’re just going to get single sign-on through JumpCloud,’” Pearson continues. “Over the next two or three months, JumpCloud will be the portal all of our clients go through to access everything.”
Increasing compliance
The Light aligns clients with its standards and best security practices, most of which are built around the Cyber Essentials framework. As an example, thanks to JumpCloud, it’s easy for The Light’s team to determine at a glance that a single machine hasn’t been updated. This, in turn, enables them to know exactly where to direct their focus.
“Continuous compliance is essential to mitigate cyber threats,” Pearson says. “Once you get to a level of compliance, we’re going to keep you there. If you’ve not gone through the process yet, we’ll put the systems and processes in place to allow you to get there so you can become compliant and stay compliant.”
Delivering more value to clients
As The Light evolves its business, Pearson is planning to bring on a customer success manager that will run workshops to make sure clients know how to use all the tools they have at their disposal.
“Things like Password Manager — we need to make sure everyone’s using it and make sure they’ve deleted all the passwords from the cloud,” Pearson explains.
Future-proofing their strategy
After more than five years, Pearson is confident he’s found the right partner in JumpCloud — a partner that can keep pace with the MSP’s growth. Not only does the platform pack a big punch already, JumpCloud is constantly rolling out new features that help both The Light and its clients accomplish more every day.
“We are making life easier by continually improving our client’s technology,” Pearson says, adding that JumpCloud is the mesh that ties each client’s computing infrastructure together.
“The way we’ve always packaged it is: JumpCloud is the glue that connects your computers, Mac and PCs, with Office 365 or Google,” Pearson says. “I’m really impressed with JumpCloud from a technical point of view and also a functional point of view. JumpCloud is allowing us to do stuff that we couldn’t do as a small business before.”
Learn more about JumpCloud
JumpCloud changes the way IT administrators manage their organizations by providing a comprehensive and flexible cloud directory platform. From one pane of glass, manage user identities and resource access, secure Mac, Windows, and Linux devices, and get a full view of your environment.
Get started with JumpCloud today.