MSP Platform Vendors Race To Integrate
Three major providers of managed service provider-focused platforms revealed substantial expansions or integrations of their platforms in the last week, highlighting the arms race among top-tier vendors to provide a one-stop toolset for an MSP's business.
Autotask on Monday announced the unification of its professional services automation (PSA) and remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools. Newly dubbed the Autotask PSA and Endpoint Management platform, the unification is supposed to make technicians at MSP companies more efficient by eliminating the need for them to toggle between systems, while also leading to new insights as they see previously disparate information in the same user interface.
"We believe services and devices are the foundation of any IT practice, and belong together in a single product experience," said Patrick Burns, vice president of product management for Autotask, in a statement. "We are delivering the ability to perform work via a single interface, and providing business stakeholders with unified analytics to better understand the relationship between service delivery and computing environments leading to more informed, strategic decisions about the business."
On the same day, SolarWinds N-able announced a more thorough job of pulling a recently acquired technology into its MSP portfolio. Last October, SolarWinds N-Able released remote control access and support product MSP Anywhere, based on the acquisition of BeAnywhere. Initially, MSP Anywhere was a paid product for secure remote support of Windows PCs, Macs and iOS and Android devices.
This week, SolarWinds N-able integrated the functionality into its flagship N-central RMM platform. Called MSP Connect, the remote support and access feature is now a free component of the newly released 10.2 version of N-central.
In the most old-school of the recent batch of integrations, ConnectWise late last week announced a partnership with CentreStack, which offers a multitenant file sync and share product that competes with offerings such as Dropbox and Box. ConnectWise helped drive the RMM-PSA integration push with its investment in RMM provider LabTech in 2010, and also acquired the ScreenConnect remote control platform last year. The CentreStack integration is initially with LabTech, but ConnectWise intends to integrate it with its PSA platform soon.
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 20, 2016