Manage 100+ 365 Tenants Without Losing Your Mind (974)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, coming at you live from Zero Trust World in Orlando, Florida, continuing on with day two. And we have a very nice show planned for you right now. This is, if you ever wonder if a show is unscripted, you're going to find out about it right now.

I have two gentlemen with me where we just got our first introduction. This was set up by a third party. I'll just leave it at that.

I've got with me, Graham Morrison and Cole Kaparos from Inforcer MSP, and we're going to learn all about that here. So guys, welcome to the show. Thank you for having us.

Hey, man. All right. So what are your talking points? I think we should do introductions first.

I'll go first. So my name's Graham. I'm one of the Microsoft 365 Solutions Architects at Inforcer, also lead the team across EMEA and US.

And so our team deals with pre and post-sales engagements at Inforcer. So we're so Microsoft adjacent, we're quite different to other SaaS companies where we have pre-sales department and a post-sales, we do it all under one roof. Primarily for staff attention.

We love just having a gun at everything. It also helps us with stories at pre-sale. So yeah, that's me.

I lead the team. Cole? Cole, I also am a solutions architect at Inforcer. Work underneath Graham, actually, so he's my boss.

But yeah, I mean, really we are there to support everybody in the business. So at your entire journey through Inforcer, you'll be working directly with our team. So pre-sales, post-sales implementation.

We kind of, I always like to say we're like the backbone a little bit, you know, everybody likes to work with our team. We love helping out. Okay.

Make sure everybody feels supported. So Inforcer itself. I was going to say, the one thing I know about you guys is that you help people manage 365 tenants, right? Exactly that.

So we're primarily targeted at MSPs to help them solve the Microsoft 365 management challenge. All right. So I previously worked in MSP boots on the ground for six or seven years.

And one thing we really struggled with was the management and the standardization of 365 across a hundred or so customers. Right. Every tenancy looked different.

Every tenancy had a different level of security posture. Every tenancy was using Microsoft in a different way, and that caused lots of challenges. So such as operational efficiencies, obviously the risk that comes with it.

So the opportunity to come and work in Inforcer, obviously really exciting and help us other MSPs do that. So that's where we are. So that's primarily what the software does.

Okay. Primarily. What's secondarily? Well, you know, it's an interesting one.

I mean, we help people with that standardization of Microsoft, but there's other opportunities that come with it. And as we are so MSP focused, we really need to think commercially. So what do MSPs actually want to achieve? And operational efficiency and risk reduction is obviously one of the primary pieces.

But because we're MSP focused, there's commercial wins to be had with Microsoft 365. So enabling MSPs to make money and commercialize their services or improve their go to market is really important. And it's 2026, we're going to be talking about AI.

So helping MSPs get their small, medium business customers ready for Copilot, both in a productive and secure manner is another part that we're now branching into with our Copilot readiness surveys. All right. So let me ask this.

There's some other products in the channel that we're familiar with. There's obviously the Microsoft Lighthouse. There's SIP, Nerdio.

How far do you guys go into the tenancy? Are you also helping with Intune? Are you helping with Defender? All of that stuff? The IIN, unfortunately, actually stands for Intune. So that's kind of the bread and butter of where we started. But yeah, to get into, we cover all 365 policies.

So that is, I think, the depth that we can get into as well. It's super helpful, especially when you're fine tuning the policies for a specific customer. We're allowing you to basically have one platform instead of having to jump between different admin centers and do it time and time again.

It's all right in front of you, making sure that that policy is exactly what you need for that specific customer. We've got two primary differentiators, I believe. And one of them is the fact that we support purview.

So when it comes to Copilot deployments, we must have purview. I hate that panel. So yeah, we can take the pain out of that.

Just help you standardize that across multiple tenancies. And then outside of that, it's just the ease of use of the platform. So our product team, and in turn us, will talk a lot around democratizing Microsoft 365.

I've worked with it for years. I wouldn't say I'm an expert anymore. I've probably de-skilled over the year or so.

I've been an Inforcer just because I've gone into leadership. But the biggest challenge in MSP is actually understanding Microsoft 365. And our platform allows 365 to be used by all functions within that business.

First, second, third line support, consultants, and the commercial teams. So there are other tools on the market that you may not want a commercial team member to log into because it's probably a bit too difficult to use. Yeah, I'm going to try to be nice when we talk about this.

But I know that, of course, the dashboard is one thing to be able to go seamlessly back and forth between tenants, being able to push out policies, the same policy to multiple tenants. And I know that with the GDAPs, and now the Graph AI, I guess, is all part of that. I know you guys say it's easy, but is it really? What, using Inforcer? Yeah, across multiple tenants, being able to push out policies.

It's super easy. We can do demos of the platform. It's typically under 20 minutes.

It's really easily laid out. Their focus is there to make sure that everyone within the MSP, technical or otherwise, can use it. Obviously supported by role-based access control to make sure the commercial teams aren't pushing out policies.

Of course. The ability to run reports and have that visibility they didn't previously have. They can spot opportunity for project work or licensing upsells or co-pilot for 365 deployments.

Okay. Now, when it comes to the sales side, helping MSPs price and sell properly, how are you guys doing that? Because everybody's trying to get their pricing through distributors or Pax8 or direct CSP and stuff like that. How do you guys help with that? So, right now, we sell directly to the MSPs.

So we work with them. I don't know if I should tease at it. I think soon, that's the goal.

We want to work. I actually come from Pax8, ironically. You mentioned them.

But I think soon, that's the focus. Okay. We work with distributions.

I know it's a big channel. Everybody wants to work through it. Billing makes it a little bit easier from one spot.

Right. But right now, it's just going to be through the MSPs specifically. To help, I think you brought up really commercializing.

Projects are going to be the biggest thing. That's where you can make so much money in the ROI when it comes back to Inforcer s being able to standardize and repeat it. It changes people's go-to-market when it comes to Microsoft 365.

MSP is very crowded. And I genuinely believe the differentiator for MSPs would be leveraging modern technologies such as Microsoft 365. Not specifically.

We're at a threat level conference. I think it's a fantastic tool. People should be looking at that.

But there's definitely a case for tool consolidation. There is a lot of tools for MSPs. And a lot of MSPs sell Microsoft 365 as a premium.

And they're sitting on a war chest of fantastic tools. Yeah. That may not have been viable for them because it was difficult to leverage as an MSP at scale.

Not having the service assurance or being fully aware of exactly how it's configured across customers' environments. Having Inforcer can allow you to consolidate mostly on Microsoft 365. Save on third-party tools.

Increase efficiency that way. All right. So you brought it up.

And I'm going to go ahead and dive in. You're here at a threat locker conference. How does Zero Trust fit in your platform? I would say it's all around the left-of-boom configuration of Microsoft 365.

So there's a lot of tools in the market. Rightly so, it's needed for that right-of-boom. What's happened when things have fallen apart and something's gone bang? But I don't feel there's enough focus on the left-of-boom.

If you ensure that your environments are set up correctly, conditional access, in-tune defenders being leveraged correctly, you are obviously going to get breached. They are going to get through the gates because they're being left open. You shut the gates, they're far less likely for someone to get through them.

Right. So from a Zero Trust perspective, it's ensuring that those foundations are set up correctly, aligned with Zero Trust principles. It's a huge question, what is Zero Trust? It's a collection of processes and tools that you need in place to do it.

But making sure your tools are actually configured correctly seems like a no-brainer to me. Okay. Alright, some sidebar questions.

So I think I've seen you guys at one other conference. I think I've avoided your table because either there was no swag on the table or I didn't understand your swag. So let's talk about that.

Tell me about your swag. About the swag? Just the shirt? That's it? The t-shirts, people love it because it's Star Wars-esque. So on the first day people come over, maybe we're too nice.

If you're not an MSP, maybe you shouldn't get swag. Maybe you should just bring more. But may the Inforcer be with you and use the Inforcer MSP seems to go down very well.

They re primarily t-shirts. Okay. I think the shirts were like back in the back.

I couldn't just grab it as I walked by because you're scanning everybody, right? No. We have compensated. There's no point scanning people who aren't going to be ICP for Inforcer.

We don't want to barrage someone's inbox with, say, irritating them and not being able to sell anything. Okay. Yeah.

All right. When did you guys get started? Originally founded in 2022. Full go to market 2023.

That's right. Okay. Yeah.

US started 2024. I joined December 24. I was number 40.

We're now at around 170. Okay. All right.

I started in August of last year. So I was probably around employee 80-ish. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's grown like wildfire. Did they come find you to pluck you away from where you were? Yeah.

I just had a conversation and saw the product. And I said, wow. Where I come from, the PAC said I was working with MSPs daily on licensing.

We're flipping between admin centers. They're signing into 9,000 things. That was half the call was waiting for them to load the authenticator into it.

And I saw this platform. I was like, I could see this working so well for so many people. And then, I mean, the culture that we have in our companies is unbelievable.

So it was an easy. It was a good fit for me. But yeah.

I won't say they plucked me, but it was a mutual. I just want to see if Rob Ray is listening. That's all I'm doing.

See if he gets back to Rob. He'll let me know. Dude, don't ask that.

All right. So how's it been for you guys in terms of being out on the road, getting out in front of people, getting the MSPs to notice you? How's that been? It's amazing fun. Yeah.

Yeah. Everyone at Inforcer has an MSP background. So whether that be boots on the ground like me or people like Cole who have been selling to MSPs for years and years, everyone's got that background.

And I think one of the differentiators we want is to deliver that world-class customer service. Yeah. I can't say some things.

But we really want to deliver a world-class customer service. A lot of the people in our team are known from working at the Dattos in this world, the ConnectWises. So they've got those relationships.

You're going to see people that we used to work with. So my old manager at Inforcer when I first started, I worked with him at MSP. My next manager, he was my account manager at ConnectWise.

So we all know each other. We get along. So being out in front of people, it's great.

I feel like we're very quickly growing that brand awareness. All right. Very nice.

You think we hit all the questions that your point of contact wanted us to hit? I think so. We'll see if they set you up with any others. Well, Graham, Cole, thank you guys for stopping by.

And I'm going to throw her under the bus. Thank Jill for setting us up. And I'll come back by the booth and check things out.

And I'll get a shirt. I don't think I have a shirt. I thought you were going to need that.

All right. Well, I'll have to find you guys soon so I can get it up in the rafters with all the other vendor shirts. Absolutely.

All right. Graham, Cole, thank you guys for stopping by. All right, folks.

That'll do it. Inforcer, MSP, check them out if you want to make managing your 365 tenants life easier. Sounds good? Yes.

All right. I'll be back with more from Zero Trust World here in Orlando. We'll see you soon.

Holla!