IT OPERATIONS
People and Core Solutions
People Helping People
In our experience, winery people are wonderful people. Passionate about creating great experiences for wine lovers, passionate about their region, and of course passionate about their product. We've also found that winery people are businesspeople. We've seen the industry go through a number of interesting shifts over the past decade, and we've seen, more often than not, resilient wineries adapt.
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We're proud to say that the industry-expert people in our Grape Squad support group have helped our clients adapt. Year over year many organizations find they are facing the same challenges and not making substantive progress on fundamentals like increasing productivity, boosting staff morale, increasing functionality, lowering overall technology costs, reaching better profit margins, achieving a better work-life balance, and most importantly finding peace of mind.
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​We know how to help.
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Healthy IT Operations depend on a set of expert human beings (the Grape Squad - for more information see Support) leveraging a proven set of solutions to help another set of human beings (winery staff). These solutions are what we call our "TCP Core" which the Grape Squad uses to take care of clients under our Total Care Plan. ​
Total Care Plan Core Solutions
Our TCP Core consists of five solutions:
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Humanize IT - A Framework for Conversations
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Autotask - Professional Services Automation
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Auvik - Network Management & Monitoring
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Kaseya 365 Endpoint - Endpoint Management & Monitoring
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Kaseya 365 User - User Protection & Security Training
A Framework for Conversations​
Humanize IT​ is a platform which helps vCIOs (Virtual Chief Information Officers) facilitate an ongoing set of highest-level business/technology conversations with clients. These discussions are the most critical factor in establishing a healthy IT Organization. There are essentially infinite ways organizations can invest in IT, many of which cost far more than necessary and/or don't fundamentally support key business objectives.
The founder and CEO of Humanize IT interviewed our founder and vCIO Sam Weiner on how these discussions happen, and what it means to be an effective Bespoke Winery MSP. Watch clips and the complete interview on our Total Care Plan page.
Professional Services Automation​
Autotask is what's called a Professional Services Automation system (a PSA). The Grape Squad uses Autotask as our primary system to communicate with winery staff about issues they face. The Autotask PSA is the engine behind our Service Desk, and it enables us to streamline and automate our internal support operations.
In addition, because Autotask is owned by Kaseya, it is tightly integrated with two additional critical parts of our IT Operations: Kaseya 365 Endpoint and Kaseya 365 User
Network Management & Monitoring
Auvik is an innovative platform which enables MSPs to dynamically map client networks and then use that map as a window into the network, supporting a range of capabilities to manage and backup key network device configurations (firewalls, managed switches, and so on), along with as a robust set of monitoring and alerting features.
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Auvik includes a particularly useful feature called a "Northstar" diagram which enables the Grape Squad to isolate the network path between any given device (for instance a critical POS terminal) and the Internet, and to dynamically see any issues in that path.
Endpoint Management & Monitoring
An "Endpoint" is a device used by winery staff in their day-to-day lives. Desktop computers, laptops, servers, and mobile devices are typical Endpoints. Kaseya 365 Endpoint (or K365 Endpoint) is a suite of solutions which enable the Grape Squad to secure, backup, manage, and automate maintenance of these devices.
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A few key K365 Endpoint capabilities:
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Ransomware attack behavior monitoring (system or network)
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Windows operating system patch management
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Antivirus deployment and updates
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Remote Endpoint control (for maintenance, training, and direct staff support)
User Protection & Security Training
A "User" is a winery staff member (who may or may not have an Endpoint device). Kaseya 365 User (K365 User) protection includes a range of features to prevent threats, respond to them, and recover from them. Winery staff are protected both when using Endpoint devices and when using "cloud" business platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
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A few key K365 User capabilities:
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Automatic backup of all corporate email into a searchable archive along with other corporate data (calendars, address books, chat sessions, and so on)
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AI email anti-phishing defense
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Dark web monitoring for user data breaches
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User awareness training, threat simulation and testing