HostPilot® Control Panel
HostPilot integrates your services, users and devices. It’s a “single pane of glass” for your cloud.
HostPilot service details
The Basics
Why is the control panel so important?
When businesses consider cloud services, they often focus on productivity and user experience. But the control panel should be a key decision factor. From integration headaches to security nightmares, here’s why the control panel should be an integral part of your decision.
No integration between services
When a company buys cloud services from different vendors, there’s no guarantee that those services will integrate with one another. When services are siloed, IT staff wastes time copying information from one app to the next, increasing the likelihood for errors.
Locations can’t be centrally managed
Many different services means many different control consoles that IT staff have to manage – provisioning and deprovisioning users, setting up mobile devices, and organizing data in each console separately. Instead of spending time on more strategic initiatives, IT staff are managing cloud services.
Many processes to learn
With many different services for many different providers, users and IT staff have to learn the ins and outs of working in each one. Different provisioning processes and different reporting mechanisms challenge IT admins while multiple login credentials confuse users.
Too many support phone numbers
Each cloud provider has its own support service, its own help procedures and its own way of handling customer support. IT admins will need to deal with all of them when trying to get help with issue.
Overburdened IT admins
Every additional cloud service provider that a company buys from compounds the effort required by IT admins to manage everything. Multiple vendors mean multiple processes, multiple invoices and multiple control panels. Rather than worker to further a company’s business objectives, IT is forced to waste time managing cloud services.
Patchy security across services
Each cloud provider has its own idea of what security means for it’s services, what uptime SLAs it’s willing to support and what it’s willing to do to protect customer data. When a company is working with a lot of different vendors details can slip through the cracks, putting company data at risk.
Features
Controlling services
HostPilot makes it simple to add new services, manage app settings, respond to user service requests, get reports, and much more. You get a clear view of your cloud services and how they are being used by your employees.
- Easily add new services. A click or two shows you the information you need to know, including terms and pricing. When you decide you want to add a new service, a click or two more adds it to the Your Services tab. Now you’re ready to provision users.
- App settings all in one place. Easily manage your Intermedia apps, including mobile settings, storage capacity, auditing and permissions.
- Manage user service requests. Easily manage incoming service requests from users. One click accepts or rejects a request. And if the service request is accepted, it’s immediately turned on for the user.
- Audit logs provide transparency. Review and export audit logs to track changes made in the system and account activity, down to the transaction level.
- Full integration among services. Your Intermedia services are integrated with each other, with your Active Directory and with HostPilot. Provision services in HostPilot and they sync with AD…and vice versa.
- Support is a click away. Create a new support ticket right or start a chat with our Intermedia support team right from HostPilot.
Controlling users
With HostPilot, it’s simple to set up and manage user accounts across all their services. This makes it easy to onboard new employees, deprovision departing ones, and help keep your users happy and productive. It can even sync with an existing on-premises Active Directory.
Full control over user set up and management
With HostPilot, setting up new users and managing their services takes only a few seconds. Just enter basic user information into HostPilot and select the cloud services you want that user to have.
You can also change user settings, distribution lists, company contacts, disk space, and more. And HostPilot supports multiple levels of administrators so you can assign specific people to manage different Intermedia services.
You can also set up and manage user accounts with our HostPilot mobile app.
Keep using the tools you use today as you migrate to the cloud
Are you already using Active Directory to manage on-premise applications? That’s great. HostPilot integrates with Active Directory, so you can keep your cloud services in sync with your on-premises applications. This gives you a single system of record for your users and services.
Save IT resources and empower users at the same time
Intermedia provides a control panel for end users called My Services that lets your employees manage their Intermedia services. IT admins have complete control over what users can do in My Services: what services they can access and which permissions.
Now, instead of calling the help desk, users can perform many tasks themselves:
- Easy password reset. Users can quickly reset their password in My Services rather than calling the help desk.
- Monitoring storage consumption. With My Services, users can track how much storage they’re using and request more.
- Request and download new services. Users can see the services that they currently have and request new services with a click of a button. A request is sent to your IT staff to approve. Then HostPilot provisions the service.
- Access OWA. With My Services, users who are out of the office or using a mobile device can quickly access Outlook Web Access for remote access to their hosted Exchange email service.
- User photo upload. Users upload their photo in My Services and it propagates to other interfaces like MS Outlook, OWA, and Lync.
- Remote wipe. Users can perform remote wipe on lost or stolen mobile devices.
- Back up and restore mailbox. Users can back up and restore their Outlook mailbox from My Services.
- My Services mobile app. Available for iOS and Android devices.
Integrated mobile device management
Your users want mobile access data and collaboration tools. You want security and control. Wih HostPilot, you can easily manage the devices that access your cloud services, set security policies and more. This makes it easy to onboard new employees, deprovision departing ones, and help keep your users happy and productive.
Integrated mobile device management
Today everyone wants to be able to get work done from anywhere, at any time. But you need to make sure employees aren’t taking unnecessary risks with company data. HostPilot helps give you control over the mobile devices accessing your cloud services.
Quickly enable devices
With a few quick mouse clicks, you can enable and manage a wide range of mobile devices, including Windows Mobile, iPhone, iPad, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android through one management console.
Help protect company data
If a user’s mobile device is lost or stolen, you can remotely wipe the device right from HostPilot, so critical company data is removed. Plus, SecuriSync supports remote wipe of laptops and desktops, too. You can also deactivate devices so they no longer receive emails.
Manage security policies
HostPilot allows you to set security and management policies, including passcode enforcement, for virtually all your mobile devices with one integrated view.
Why Intermedia?
24/7 expert support
Our engineers work behind-the-scenes to keep your cloud performing at the highest levels. This ensures that nothing distracts you from growing your business.
But should the need arise, our support philosophy is simple: we’re here when you need us. And we respond to you, fast.
Here’s what you get with Intermedia’s support:
| Expert phone support |
|
|---|---|
| All-hours availability | 24/7 phone and chat support is included in most plans. |
| Short hold times | We typically answer the phone in 60 seconds or less. (This level of service beats executive support at Fortune 500 companies.) |
| Commitment to resolution | Unlike other providers, we won’t push you to self-help solutions. We’ll stay with you until we resolve your problem. |
| No ‘critical issues’ standard | Unlike other providers, we don’t enforce a threshold for phone support. Admins can call us for help with any issue. |
| No lock-in to a single person | Your account history is available to the entire support team. Each of us has the context to solve your problems. |
| Commitment to quality | We don’t pressure team members on call length. All our key metrics are related to first-call resolution and customer satisfaction. |
| Obsession with satisfaction | We’ll survey your satisfaction after every call. And we’ll contact you every six months to get your feedback. |
| No outsourcing | Every team member is a direct employee. Our overnight support office is manned by English-speaking team members whose certification and problem-solving ability equals our daytime staff. |
| Senior technicians are available | If you have a highly technical challenge, feel free to request a Level 2 support technician. |
| Going beyond individual cases | You can request a 90-day review of all your support cases to identify and eliminate recurring issues. |
99.999% financially backed SLA
Intermedia believes in giving our customers the best service possible. So we provide your business with a financially backed 99.999% (five nines) uptime service level agreement for all our services.
A 99.999% uptime SLA means that you should expect less than six minutes of downtime over the course of a year—and, if we should fail to deliver, we’ll compensate you for it.
Our competitors—including Office 365—only offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. That’s just three nines. And while that difference may not seem significant, the difference actually amounts to downtime of over 8 hours.
| Availability % | Downtime per year |
|---|---|
| 99.8% | 17.52 hours |
| 99.9% (“three nines”) | 8.76 hours |
| 99.95% | 4.38 hours |
| 99.99% (“four nines”) | 52.56 minutes |
| 99.999% (“five nines”) | 5.26 minutes |
| Source: Wikipedia, “High Availability” | |
How would your business suffer if you couldn’t communicate with your customers or coworkers for a whole day? Or even half a day? With Intermedia’s five-nines uptime guarantee, you won’t have to find out.
How do we guarantee five nines availability?
We architect our cloud specifically for reliability, performance, and data protection.
Enterprise-class security
Our business is predicated on our ability to offer a more secure environment than our customers could deploy themselves on-premises.
Multi-tenant platform security
Intermedia uses multiple redundant, enterprise-class firewall systems to prevent unwarranted intrusions.
Intrusion protection systems
Intermedia runs multiple intrusion protection systems (IPS) (both host and network) to detect and deter malicious network traffic and computer usage.
Physical security
Our datacenters are closely monitored and guarded 24/7/365 with sophisticated pan/tilt closed-circuit TVs. Secure access is strictly enforced. Security guards are stationed at the entrance to each site.
Employee security
Every Intermedia employee undergoes a rigorous background check. Employee access to passwords, encryption keys and electronic credentials is strictly controlled. Access to servers is restricted to authorized engineers and monitored regularly.
Redundant internet service providers
Each datacenter is serviced by multiple Tier-1 Internet providers to mitigate the potential impact of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.
Authentication and access
Intermedia’s stringent policies and procedures authenticate a caller’s identify during support and service calls. Our online control panel gives you full control over access to services and administrative functions.
Dedicated security staff and monitoring
Intermedia employs dedicated, full-time security staff who are certified in all disciplines of information security.
Privacy
Intermedia is registered and certified with the US Department of Commerce for privacy under the Safe Harbor program.
SOC 2 Certification
Intermedia has a SOC 2 audit report from an independent auditor who has validated that, in their opinion, our controls and processes were effective in assuring security during the evaluation period.
PCI compliance
Our payment processing system has passed the strict testing procedures necessary to be compliant with the PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).
Cloud Concierge™ Onboarding
The hardest part about moving your IT into the cloud is retaining the value that’s invested in your current system
Most cloud providers force you into a DIY migration path or “recommend” hiring a migration consultant. But Intermedia is different.
Our Cloud Concierge™ experts implement a custom migration plan to move your existing users and data into the cloud with minimal interruption to your business—at no extra cost. We migrate an average of 15,000 mailboxes and over 5,000 phone numbers to Intermedia each month, so you know you’re in good hands. Our Cloud Concierge onboarding experts are certified by Microsoft and Cisco, along with other product-specific certifications like SSVVP/SSCA and Sonic Wall. And they routinely complete training courses to increase their knowledge and skills.
Hosted Exchange
Our Cloud Concierge experts will work with you to:
- Design an email migration plan that fits your schedule to reduce disruption
- Set up your email accounts
- Migrate your existing data
- Shift your employees over to the new email service seamlessly and without loss of data
Hosted PBX
Our Cloud Concierge experts will work with you to:
- Test your network to make sure it can properly support high-quality calls
- Work with you and your service providers to optimize your network, if needed
- Set up your Hosted PBX service
- Port over your existing phone numbers
- Ship your new phones
- Provide training for using your auto-attendant, creating and managing users and call lists, deploying Callscape, and leveraging other mobility features
Email Archiving
For migrating existing data, you have a number of options:
- Currently an Intermedia Exchange customer? We’ll port your current mailbox states into Intermedia’s Email Archiving at no cost.
- Currently using Intermedia’s Message Mirror? We’ll migrate and ingest your full data set at no cost.
- Currently using another archiving solution? We’ll migrate and ingest your full data set for you.
SecuriSync® backup and file sharing
Want to sync a file server up to SecuriSync? Just use our SecuriSync for Windows File Server sync tool to:
- Install the tool on your file server
- Decide whether to sync all or a subset of the files to the cloud, or
- Migrate all the files to SecuriSync in case you no longer require the server
Intermedia Office Apps
Enabling Office apps for your users is easy. Simply provision your users for Office apps in HostPilot and then instruct them to log in to My Services and install the apps. Our Knowledge Base provides all the details, including installation and login instructions for your users.
Intermedia AppID®
Our Knowledge Base provides all the information you need to quickly enable AppID for your users. We provide an Admin guide that shows you how to provision users and add custom apps to the service. And give you an end user guide for your users that shows them how to add apps to their portal and use AppID to access those apps.
Powerful control panel
Every Intermedia service is managed through our powerful HostPilot™ control panel.
HostPilot integrates control over your Intermedia user accounts, services and devices across your locations. It essentially functions as a “business cloud platform”—making your cloud simple to manage while still offering granular control that matches an on-premises environment.
Control over services
- Easily add other Intermedia services (such as SecuriSync file sync and share or Skype for Business)
- Accept or reject user service requests
- Review logs of all changes for transparency
Control over devices
- Manage a wide range of mobile devices
- Set security and management policies for virtually all your mobile devices, including passcode enforcement, data encryption, etc.
- Perform remote wipes on lost or stolen devices
- Restrict devices from accessing Intermedia services
- See all enabled devices across your organization
Control over user accounts
- Add, delete or modify user accounts for web applications
- Change user settings, distribution lists, company contacts, disk space and much more
- Set up multiple levels of administrators
- View detailed exportable reports of your account activity, down to individual transactions
- Empower users to self-administrate (see below)
- Sync with your on-premises Active Directory (via our UserPilot service)
HostPilot mobile app
Our HostPilot mobile app lets you control your Intermedia cloud using your iPhone, iPad or Android device. It’s free and available in Google Play or the Apple App Store.
My Services: Our user control panel
The My Services portal lets each Intermedia user perform simple administrative activities. This includes changing passwords, requesting new services, or downloading desktop applications. My Services helps eliminate many of the routine requests that distract admins on a daily basis.
