Auvik SaaS Management A ‘Table Stake Of The MSP Of The Future’

‘We’re continuing to see a serious demand for a SaaS management tool in the MSP market,’ says John Harden, senior product marketing manager, tells CRN. ‘Not only the demand from the MSPs to us, but also the customers demanding it from their partners to deliver a service like this.’

Auvik’s John Harden

Cloud-based network management company Auvik released its software-as-as-service management tool to the entire MSP market this week, and the company believes it will be essential to security stacks in the future.

“In my opinion, SaaS management will be a table stake of the MSP of the future,” John Harden, senior product marketing manager of Ontario, Canada-based Auvik, told CRN. “Whether you’re an early adopter or a late adopter it’s going to be part of your stack at some point in your life cycle. It’s just a matter of when you choose to adopt it.”

Auvik SaaS Management eliminates shadow IT, giving MSPs capabilities to discover, manage and secure SaaS environments. It also provides greater security, operational efficiency and cost management capabilities as organizations become more dependent on SaaS.

[Related: Auvik Networks Unveils Official Partner Program To Capture $16B Enterprise Opportunity]

“We’re continuing to see a serious demand for a SaaS management tool in the MSP market,” Harden said. “Not only the demand from the MSPs to us, but also the customers demanding it from their partners to deliver a service like this.”

The SaaS management product came to Auvik through its acquisition of Saaslio in November 2022. Since then, the management platform was only available to internal customers.

“I truly think it’s been exacerbated with the work-from-home and the hybrid environment…all the things that have really accelerated adoption of SaaS, and the lack of control of everything going on,” he said. “We see the MSP market as blue ocean and we see it as a market that needs served.”

AI has also contributed to the growth. SMBs have increasingly adopted cloud and SaaS tools, and in the first quarter of 2023, Auvik SaaS Management recorded a 559.2 percent growth in usage of ChatGPT.

“What we’re seeing from the partners is they’ve got a lot of great visibility into what’s going on on their devices,” Harden said. “They know what software is installed on the devices, but the minute that user goes on to that browser and starts accessing web tools, that’s where the visibility really disappears. They have visibility into the network. They have visibility on what’s going on in the software, but all the data is in the SaaS tools and they don’t have visibility into what the users are using per SaaS.

“The demand is visibility, especially as the MSP becomes more compliant-heavy, more security- focused and looking to deliver more offerings down to the end client,” he added.

He described the SaaS Management tool as half IT, half business, giving MSPs an opportunity to not only secure their environment, but be strategic about where they’re heading with their business.

“We’ve integrated Auvik SaaS Management into our standard QBR process,” Mark Creighton, vCIO and client executive at Indianapolis-based MSP Resultant, told CRN. “Utilizing the tool in this capacity has allowed us to connect with clients at a deeper level, providing insights into areas we’ve never discussed before. While this has increased opportunity for our business, it has also added an additional level of trust between our business and our clients.”

Harden said one of the biggest pain points MSPs have is documentation of the client. Whereas Auvik’s network management tool helps automate the management and inventory of all their network assets, Auvik SaaS management tool will help automate the inventory of all their SaaS assets, “so that’s a huge value of time saving,” Harden said.

Streamlining onboarding and offboarding cycles, strategic shadow IT reviews and compliance are all cost savers to the MSP, he added.

“SaaS isn’t going anywhere. Employees are adopting SaaS at breakneck speed,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to be more efficient at their job and get more done in less time, and SaaS is a perfect vehicle to do it.”