Announcing the launch today, Kris Hansen, Asia/Pacific Technology Manager at GFI Software, said MSPs are faced with an “accelerating rate of adoption of cloud services in their customer base and until now this has presented more threat than opportunity.”

“The movement to cloud-based services in the SMB sector is well-established and is not going to slow down. Previously, MSPs have not had access to tools that allow them to embrace these services and be proactive in offering and supporting them for their customers, all while facing the added risk of either increasing unbillable time or weakening their customer relationship.

“With App Control’s new cloud management features, MSPs using GFI MAX RemoteManagement have the opportunity to create new revenue streams by taking the complexity out of cloud adoption and taking on additional responsibility for a new, critical component of their customers’ businesses.

“The data available about their clients’ cloud services use will better position MSPs to advise customers on cloud strategies and current trends, increasing their value even further.”

Hansen said App Control will initially allow MSPs to manage Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps user accounts, mailboxes and licenses, all from a single dashboard.

“This new feature further enables MSPs to shift from device management to managing the broader user experience, as well as enabling them to add additional value to customer relationships and better address clients’ evolving needs.”

Hansen listed key benefits of the new feature including:

•    Enhanced administration and monitoring capabilities help clients to reduce waste on unused cloud services licenses

•    Fast onboarding and offboarding capabilities enable MSPs to create, update or remove user accounts easily, ensuring that customers can get new employees up and running on cloud services quickly, even in the face of high turnover

•    Dramatically simpler management of security groups, distribution lists, organisations and teams from a single screen allows for added efficiency when adopting and managing new services

•    Reporting capabilities allow MSPs to better predict future usage trends and help customers understand their current and future cloud services costs.