Roaring Penguin Software, Inc. today is rolling out an integration with Autotask, along with a new messaging product, for managed services providers (MSPs) in the latest version of its email filtering software.

With the release of CanIt 9.1.0, Hosted CanIt and CanIt-Domain-PRO can now integrate with Autotask to automate monthly billing for anti-spam services, the company said.

Before going with Autotask, the company "looked at a few professional services automation (PSA) products," Roaring Penguin President David F. Skoll said.

"It was extremely easy to integrate with CanIt, and the Autotask engineers and documentation are excellent," he said. "Their philosophy of moving the PSA for MSPs into the cloud nicely matches up with our cloud-based anti-spam offering."

Besides Autotask, Roaring Penguin hasn't integrated with any other PSA companies, but it's open to looking at other products, Skoll added.

"We started with Autotask because in our opinion, it was the best product from a technical viewpoint," he said.

In addition to the integration with Autotask, the email filtering company launched its Secure Messaging product, enabling MSPs to create policies requiring the encryption and storage of sensitive e-mail locally. The product is available as an add-on for MSPs and system administrators.

Skoll said the new product "can help keep sensitive communication confidential" and will be part of the company's focus in 2014.

"One of the biggest challenges is protecting customers from outbound malware," he said. "Many clients of MSPs are not the most technical of people."

For example, if an MSP forgets to secure outgoing mail, its customers could end up with infected computers that are used as botnet nodes spew out spam, he said. "The damage to a client's reputation and the MSP's relationship with the client can be irreparable," Skoll added.

"Roaring Penguin believes that automation will be key for MSPs in the 2014," he said. "From a provisioning process that begins by using LDAP/Active Directory to identify users all the way through to presenting the monthly bill to the client with Autotask, MSPs should automate as much as possible to reduce costs and prevent human error."

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