Partner SucceSS

9spheres technologies Helping companies Plan For a Bright It Future

9spheres Technologies provides IT services and support to small and medium businesses in and around Queensland, Australia. It provides customers with free IT plans, which regularly include Symantec™ Endpoint Protection, Backup Exec™ 2010, and Backup Exec™ System Recovery 2010. With just four employ-ees, 9spheres is known for personal, trusted service to companies in a variety of industries.

There’s a common-sense piece of advice, often called the “Five Ps,” that applies to small and medium businesses (SMBs): Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. But what sort of plan-ning? While many companies have a business plan, it’s a safe bet that fewer have an IT plan.

SMBs in Queensland, Australia that want an IT plan have an advantage: Symantec Partner 9spheres Technologies. When 9spheres engages with a new client—even before that client commits to pur-chase anything—9spheres studies its needs and creates a thorough plan that charts a winning IT strategy for the next three to five years. If the customer likes the plan—and many of them do—9spheres helps them implement it.

9spheres technical manager Nick Marot knows the SMB IT world well: he’s served it for a dozen years on two continents. He’s found that SMBs have tight budgets and tend to deal with IT on a break/fix basis, reacting to problems rather than anticipating and preempting them.

But he and Alex Marot, 9spheres’ sales manager, also know from experience that SMBs are ready to look at the longer term and want to plan for it; they just don’t know how to do it. “SMBs are looking for guidance on their infrastructure, on how to best prepare for growth, on security and continuity,” Alex says. “We’ve been successful in providing a vision of how they can take their companies to the next step. We help them set realistic and specific steps to achieving their goals.” Symantec solutions are regular elements of 9spheres’ plans.

Partner PrOFILe

Website: www.9spheres.com.au

Headquarters: Victoria Point, Queensland, AU

Geographic area Served: Brisbane and surrounding areas

Serves company Size: Small Business and Mid-market

Status: Symantec Registered Partner

Symantec Solution Focus: Endpoint Security, Data Protection, and Archiving

“The Symantec hosted

environment adds

value to what we want

to do in the future.”

nick Marot

Technical Manager

9spheres Technologies

Partner SucceSS 9SPHereS tecHnOLOGIeS

extending the team

9spheres serves about 20 permanent cus-tomers with a staff of four, including the two Marots (a husband and wife team). 9spheres helps its customers, which range in size from 20 to 100 users and represent a variety of industries, to craft and implement their IT plan and then maintain their IT systems once they’re operating. Customers pay a monthly fee for 9spheres’ attention, which Nick describes as “in your face–type service”—that is, hands-on, actively involved, and proactive.

“We’re an extension to their team,” Alex ex-plains, adding that it’s a relationship based on trust. In some cases 9spheres has remote access to client computers, and in those cases trust becomes particularly important. “When I go to a new customer, I give them my client base as referrals,” she explains. “They do phone them and find out about their trust in us, and our honesty.”

no reason to Sell anything else

The IT plans 9spheres prepares often include three Symantec products: Backup Exec System Recovery 2010, Backup Exec 2010, and Symantec Endpoint Protection. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010, Nick says, is “the best product I’ve yet come across from Symantec.” When combined with Backup Exec’s Intelligent Disaster Recovery (IDR) feature, he says, it’s a proven winner. “We’ve tried and tested it a thousand times, and each time it’s worked 100 percent for us.”

The granular restore option and the agents for Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange are selling points for Backup Exec 2010, Nick says. “Our customers run a lot of SharePoint, which I’m able to recover file-by-file,” he says. “SharePoint can be a scary application; when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. To recover files independently from each other has taken away a great headache from us.” Similarly, he appreciates the ability to recover single emails from Microsoft Exchange backups.

9SPHereS tecHnOLOGIeS SucceSS SuMMary

Specializations

Small and Medium Business

Key Industries

Financial

Real Estate

Manufacturing

Retail Trade

Services

Wholesale Trade

Other

Services Provided

IT Consulting

IT Implementation

Outsourcing

Symantec Products

Symantec Backup Exec™ for Windows® Servers

Symantec Backup Exec™ for Windows® Small Business Server

Symantec Backup Exec™ System Recovery Server Edition

Symantec Backup Exec™ System Recovery Windows® Small Business Server Edition

Symantec™ Endpoint Protection

Symantec™ Mail Security for Microsoft® Exchange

Symantec™ Mail Security for SMTP

For more information on 9spheres Technologies and other partner success stories, please go to http://go.symantec.com/partnersuccess.

And as for Symantec Endpoint Protection, 9spheres installs it on all its clients’ systems. “I don’t know if it’s the product, or the way we implement it,” Nick says with a smile, “but we’ve not had virus attacks on any of our sites that have Symantec Endpoint Protection.” (That record extends back to his days providing IT services in South Africa.) A console at the 9spheres headquarters moni-tors all clients’ protection environments, simplifying maintenance and support. “There’s no reason why I would want to sell anything else,” he says.

Because a growing number of 9spheres’ cus-tomers use hosted services—the company rents rack space in a data center, where it runs a number of clients’ applications—Nick is looking at reselling Symantec’s MessageLabs Hosted Services. “The Symantec hosted environment adds value to what we want to do in the future,” Nick says. “It gives us the ability to be more flexible in how we provide software to our clients, and it takes away a headache from us in trying to maintain that aspect of their business.”

Specializing in accurate answers

Bringing more Symantec products into the 9spheres portfolio appeals to Nick. “If we are working with a vendor, we like to carry that relationship through,” he says. “When we get to know a package well, we can sell it well. Symantec’s continuous training helps us.”

“We’ve had fantastic support from Symantec in all aspects of our business,” he continues. He gives high praise to Symantec’s technical support—including the ability to communi-cate via remote support with technical repre-sentatives—and appreciates the regular communication from Symantec marketing. “They’ve helped us so much to get to where we are today,” he says.

He also appreciates Symantec’s Small and Medium Business Specialization, which he earned quickly through online courses. “I know exactly what a Symantec product can and can’t do” because of the SMB Specialist accreditation, Nick says. “When a client throws questions at me, I can answer them confidently.”

And that’s important in light of the free three- to five-year IT plans 9spheres provides. Such plans only work for 9spheres and its customers if they’re complete and accurate. But when such plans are right, they benefit both 9spheres and its customers.

“We wholeheartedly believe that, in order for us to grow, we need to ensure that our clients also grow,” Alex says. “It’s our responsibility to inform them and guide them, so that we can ensure that they function at an optimum level.”

Partner SucceSS 9SPHereS tecHnOLOGIeS

Copyright © 2010 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec logo, and Backup Exec are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Symantec document # 21152762

“We’ve had fantastic support

from Symantec in all aspects

of our business.”

nick Marot

Technical Manager

9spheres Technologies