Case Study - UniMédia

Challenge

Founded in 1996, UniMédia today is the leading Internet provider on the Maine et Loire network. With around twenty employees, the company is devoted to meeting the needs of small and midsize businesses. This is why it makes a point of offering solutions that are easy to upgrade with high-speed connections (fiber, copper, 4G), messaging (Microsoft Exchange specialist), telephony and hosting (backups, servers, websites).

Since its inception, UniMédia has paid particular attention to IT security, a service at the center of any service related to IT in the broad sense. The first MSSP in France to choose WatchGuard in 2015, the company stands out thanks to its positioning as an exclusive supplier, uniquely capable of meeting all the network security needs of its customers, made up of companies of between 10 and 200 employees in all sectors.

“We had a real desire to stand out in the face of suppliers who all, or almost all, offered the same solutions. The choice of WatchGuard was also clear to us thanks to their best-of-breed approach, allowing our customers to benefit from the best firewall technologies on the market, which are specifically designed for the midmarket segment,” comments Philippe Le Goff, director of UniMédia, an MSSP Gold Partner of WatchGuard.

Solution

UniMédia provides its customers with a Service Pack through a monthly subscription and a minimum three-year commitment.

This Service Pack not only includes the appliance (and related warranty) but also an entire arsenal of MSP services delivered by UniMédia, ranging from deployment to maintenance, including daily commercial and technical assistance. “Our customers rely on us, which allows them to avoid any unpleasant surprises and have peace of mind. Because we support their end-to-end network security, they benefit from invaluable flexibility and time savings throughout the life of their contract,” adds Philippe.

Thanks to the Service Pack, UniMédia’s customers are seamlessly equipped with unified threat management services based on WatchGuard Firebox network security appliances. They have intelligent and scalable protection thanks to a wide range of advanced security services ranging from antivirus to zero day malware protection optimized by artificial intelligence, intrusion prevention (IPS), DNS filtering and application control.

A single, unified, Cloud-based interface allows UniMédia to easily configure customer deployments even across multiple sites. This makes it easier to configure and update security services, not to mention reporting, which becomes child’s play.“

With actionable visibility into everything that may be happening on our customers’ networks, we are able to take over all operational tasks related to the management of their respective network security without any of them having to invest in a specific infrastructure,” specifies Philippe.

Results

As a managed service provider (MSP), UniMédia fully supports the network security of its customers, who traditionally do not have the time, resources and skills required to effectively face a threat landscape that spares no business.

“The MSP business model clearly matches the expectations of SMEs and the current as-a-service trend. Services can no longer be considered as an option grafted to a sale in an attempt to grab a recurring share of its income. It must be at the base of all business planning and we have made it our spearhead,” explains the leader of UniMédia. “The as-a-service model not only lowers equipment acquisition costs but also covers many other needs including deployment, configuration, sales & technical support, maintenance, etc. This scheme makes it possible to adapt to the needs and constraints of VSEs and SMEs, and to support them over the long term, thus enabling them to compensate for the severe lack of internal resources with which they are confronted. MSPs deliver efficiency and serenity.”

Thanks to its Service Pack and the monthly subscription, UniMédia also responds to the budgetary constraints their customers often face.

“The current climate of uncertainty encourages companies to prefer the contractual model, which is more agile, to the transactional model, especially since it generates economies of scale. The costs relating to the network security of our customers are adjusted according to their specific needs, then passed on within a subscription that they pay every month,” explains Philippe. “The subscription allows us to benefit from recurring income and having such visibility on cash flow is far from trivial in a complex economic context.”

The result of the adoption of the MSP model is decisively positive for UniMédia because it has enabled the company to develop a convincing offer, easy to deploy and manage, scalable and very flexible, and one which offers absolute reassurance to companies.

“Being a long-standing MSSP partner of WatchGuard has enabled us to be a pioneer and to position ourselves early on among the leading suppliers in terms of network security to SMEs,” comments the director of UniMédia. “We are delighted with the bet we have made because it has enabled us to develop a dynamic and agile model which guarantees us recurring income based on an appropriate response to market needs. With WatchGuard, the advantages are numerous, and simplicity is king: both for us, the partner, and for the end customer.”

To go even further and respond to the challenges associated with new threats, UniMédia plans to add WatchGuard’s EDR and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to its offering and ultimately to develop a more key account-oriented service offering.