Atera Tool Finds Cash Leaks Inside MSP’s Network

‘For an average customer of Atera, we were able to reveal for them $80,000, $90,000 worth of business opportunities they’re leaving on the table,’ Atera CEO Gil Pekelman tells CRN.

Atera’s new network discovery tool gives MSPs a bottom-line look at the money they are leaving on the table in the form of hardware and software upgrades, including labor time and pricing -- all in a single pane of glass.

“It is similar to hiring and employees and telling them, ‘Listen. Go customer by customer, PC by PC, server by server, and firewall by firewall and map out for me where I need to upgrade things, where I need to change things, what I need to replace, and then calculate the number of work hours it is going to take to do it, and then price it for me, both the hardware and the time, and then prepare that for me in a list so I can take that into actions,’” Gil Pekelman, CEO of the Israel-based provider of PSA and RMM tools to MSPs, told CRN. “It is almost non doable. What our technology does is replace the human that does that and it does it instantaneously.”

Atera Network Discovery, which the company is calling “groundbreaking technology,” scans the network across each device, collects data, and analyzes the business opportunities in an actionable format. The auto-generated report finds an average of $89,000 in recurring revenue opportunities per MSP, the company said. It also gives MSPs increased visibility into their customer’s network as well as a to-do-list under a customer’s name that includes what items need to be updated, how much it costs, how long it typically takes, recommendations on how much to charge for the work, including a suggested total charge.

“So now there’s $20,000 of these types of action items sitting in a dashboard waiting for the MSP,” Pekelman said, as a hypothetical. “All they have to do is take those tasks and go and execute on them … For an average customer of Atera, we were able to reveal for them $80,000, $90,000 worth of business opportunities they’re leaving on the table.”

Atera partner Daniel Jensen has more than 24 years in IT, and recently started his own business for a second time, as an independent consultant with TAC*TECH*COOL Cybersecurity Solutions. He said he elected to use Atera because of its all-in-one offering of the PSA, RMM, and remote access tools, but the network discovery tool is a welcome bonus.

“It is a very interesting tool,” he said. “You throw it on an agent. You throw it on a domain controller, let it run, 10, 15, 20 minutes tops. Larger infrastructure takes a longer time. It goes and it finds things seamlessly. It works just like they say it works. The opportunities that are attributed to it, it does a reasonable job of going out and finding things. The more you use it, the more you can fine tune it … it’s a pretty slick tool.”

Jensen said while for the moment it only works with domain controllers, however there is a workgroup that is building Azure capabilities so MSPs who manage smaller shops can make the same network discoveries.

“I do monthly reviews, quarterly reviews, and from a cybersecurity standpoint, I always want to be identifying what changed,” he said. “Did a device get plugged in. Do you have a different storage something. That to me is a game-changer. It’s really cool. A number of folks have something similar to this, this is just a little more gritty, which makes it better.”

Jensen said he has discovered devices that the business didn’t tell him about, such as printers, and hard drives plugged in, and in some cases the business owner wasn’t aware of them.

“Monetarily, as you start to add each one of those devices in, its recurring revenue for you on a month-over-month basis, but it is also, from an exposure standpoint, you can lock those devices down, deal with them, secure them in a certain way, or monitor them so you know what they are doing.”

Atera is still new to the PSA and RMM space with 4,000 customers in 60 countries, with about 70 percent of those in North America. The company has about a million devices under managed. But the software behind its all-in-one toolset has been built from the ground up since 2011, Pekelman said not cobbled together for decades via acquisition. He said because they have a simple, per-technician cost model, more MSPs are adopting its tools.

“We’ve proven that this model of a single unified system is easy to use with a predictable pricing model is a real play. Its not a niche play. It’s a major play in the market today,” Pekelman said.