Atera Gains Foothold in Crowded MSP Toolset Vendor Market
A year after releasing an all-in-one RMM, PSA and remote access platform for MSPs, the principals at software vendor Atera say they couldn’t be more pleased with how the product has been received in the market.
The SaaS-delivered software is in use by IT service providers in 37 countries, despite the fact that Atera has no sales reps or satellite offices. Instead, the platform is accessed directly from the vendor’s website with a credit card, allowing users to get up and running in just a couple of hours.
As Atera gears up for its second year in the space, founder and CEO Gil Pekelman is looking to take the business to the next level, doubling the budget for research and development, and increasing investments in initiatives around big data, automation, machine learning and Mac support.
“We have this philosophy of keeping things simple,” Pekelman said. “We have breakthrough, disruptive technology.”
The various tools of the platform are built on a single code base and leverage one database.
As disruptive as the technology, has been Atera’s pricing model.
Users pay for subscriptions based on the number of technician accounts, and the software can be used to monitor and manage an unlimited number of endpoints.
“You’re going to pay 70 to 80 percent less,” Pekelman said, adding that there are no subscription contracts, so users pay as they go and can terminate the service at any time. “We have customers coming from the legacy software players.”
Another innovative feature of Atera’s service is an integrated business intelligence component called The Benchmark, which uses anonymized data from Atera customers to provide useful insights to subscribers.
Pekelman offered the example of an MSP that closes a contract with a new client and enters the pricing information into the platform’s PSA tool.
“The system will tell you how good your pricing is compared to your peers,” he said.
Similar data informs MSPs about their relative performance on everything from alerts and ticket loads, to response times, resolution times and a wide range of other metrics.
“In a sense, it’s making (MSPs) much more efficient,” Pekelman said. “This is actually democratizing this information.”
Such differentiators have been key to helping Atera gain quick traction in the MSP toolset space – a crowded and highly competitive business with multiple large, well-established players.
Recently, Atera was named “Best Channel Vendor” by IT publication Business Solutions. The firm is also a finalist for a Reseller Choice Award from Canada’s E-ChannelNews.com.
But while the accolades for such a young company are flattering, Atera’s CEO said his focus remains on the task of helping MSPs to run better businesses and become more profitable.
“With this platform, the MSP can give much better service,” Pekelman said. “It is making the industry much more efficient.”
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