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AVG Offers Buyout Program to PacketTrap MSPs

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Luke Walling, vice president of SMB sales and operations for North America at AVG.

Luke Walling, vice president of SMB sales and operations for North America at AVG.

When Dell announced earlier this month that it was deep-sixing the PacketTrap RMM and PSA products it acquired when it bought Quest Software, it was probably just a matter of time until one of the other MSP platform developers looked to capitalized. It turns out AVG won the race, saying Monday that it will allow MSPs who’ve built on PacketTrap MSP to use its AVG Managed Workplace RMM platform for free.

Under the program, MSPs can turn in their PacketTrap RMM licenses for a free Managed Workplace license. The program runs through the end of November, and offers at least six months of free service with Managed Workplace up to a year. To qualify for the offer, MSPs must agree to sign on for a paid subscription to Managed Workplace for a time equal to the free tryout period. The promotion is open to MSPs in the United States, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

“We wanted to step out of the box and rely on our AVG heritage to offer all of those who invested in that technology a bit of credit,” said Luke Walling, AVG’s vice president of sales and operations for SMB in North America.

Walling said the company has “seen a great deal of inbound activity” from PacketTrap-using MSPs since Dell’s decision to discontinue the PacketTrap lines became public earlier this month, and that interest fit into the decision to launch the buyout promotion. But for AVG, which itself is brand new to the RMM space through its purchase earlier this year of Ottawa-based Level Platform, it’s also a way to raise its profile in the managed services space.

“It’s about showing the channel that we care, that we’re here, that we’re staying here, and honoring our promise to continue to serve the channel.”

While development of PacketTrap ceased earlier this month, Dell has said it will continue to support existing RMM and PSA customers for the duration of their existing contracts, and will offer renewals of support contracts to existing customers “for the foreseeable future.” But for many MSPs using the platform, the lack of development in the rapidly-evolving RMM space may be enough to send them looking at alternative products that will continue to see new features and functions added.

But replacing an RMM product is a major process for many managed service providers, who may have built their business and their processes around the existing platform. Because the level of customization and personalization is different from MSP to MSP based on any number of criteria from company size to number of customers served, the level difficulty of such a transfer can differ greatly. However, Walling said Managed Workplace’s agentless model can make it easier and faster for MSPs to get the basics of RMM up and running, compared to having to install agents on a number of customers who have previously been managed on a different RMM platform. And the company is making “priority support” available to managed service providers coming over from PacketTrap to help ease the pain of changing platform while their business is still in motion.

“Offering the support of our technical account managers is one of the biggest value-adds we can provide them,” Walling said.

The number of such resources has been growing of late, as AVG trains the technical support people who have historically supported its CloudCare offering on its newly-acquired RMM platform. Walling said at this point, the support and development teams for the two products have been blended and “we have more development resources focused on RMM than ever before.”

That’s part of a broader integration between Managed Workplace and CloudCare that’s underway. The company has discussed plans to integrate security features from CloudCare into Managed Workplace, and to develop a unified management and security platform for MSPs based on the combined products. Walling hinted that the company will be making further announcements around the integration of the products and new additions of products into the Managed Workplace product as soon as next month.