Atera also provides 24/7 support for the first time, something that wasn’t a priority before because of confidence in the platform’s resilience.
Gil Pekelman, Atera’s CEO
Atera, which makes a joint Remote Monitoring and Management [RMM] and Professional Services Automation [PSA] platform with a single code base, has announced a new update of their platform. Increased automation has been a consistent Atera focus this year, and that continues with this release with a new scheduling platform that automates report generation. Other enhancements include extending their relationship with security software vendor Webroot.
“This is a major version and it has a few elements, including automating the whole interaction between the MSP and their customers,” said Gil Pekelman, Atera’s CEO.
It starts with a new report scheduling platform, together with automated reporting for system health status, work completed, and technician productivity.
“We built a system that allows us to automatically schedule a report, on a fully automated basis,” Pekelman said. “It’s very inclusive, so any type of report can go anywhere, even to the MSPs own employees.”
The biggest challenge with these systems, which Pekelman believes Atera has surmounted, is being able to make the reporting both powerful and super-simple.
“They tend to be simple and limited, or else inclusive and complex,” he said. “This is very granular, but also very simple.”
Pekelman said that while reports are often seen as mundane, good reports are critical for an MSP.
“They improve the communications with the customer, which is the key element in the relationship,” he said. “The stronger you can make that, the better.”
Two new reports have been added as well. A Software Inventory Report provides customization and device segmentation with built-in automation logic according to customized software profile. A Patch Status Summary distinguishes between different patch classes, and allows a faster reaction time threats.
Atera has also developed a new significant new search tool, which allows for actions to be taken with a single click.
“We have added a new system with a very deep search technology,” Pekelman said. “It’s now possible for the MSP for look for all computers that don’t have a specific piece of software, like Adobe Reader or Firefox. They can then install it on all the computers, by generating a script with a single click. This makes the tool both a search engine and an action engine.”
A year ago, Atera partnered with Webroot to make Webroot Anti-Virus available as a security option. Now they have extended the relationship to add Webroot secure browsing for endpoints, with SecureAnywhere DNS Protection.
“We now have a very comprehensive security suite with Webroot Anti-Virus, Webroot secure browsing, and backup, allowing MSPs to provide full security to their customers,” Pekelman said.
“One last thing that is very cool, and which has nothing to do with technology, is that we are now offering increased, 24/7 support, including real time chat support,” Pekelman said.
He indicated that support before was limited to business hours, and email.
“We were focusing on making a product that was so good that it shouldn’t need support, so it wasn’t a big priority before,” he added.
