Passportal, which just copped the Best Revenue Opportunity award from MSPs at the Datto18 show, sees the merged Datto-Autotask entity as a great Passportal opportunity.
Colin Knox, Passportal CEO
Password and document management provider Passportal made a pair of announcements at last week’s DattoCon 18 event. First, they announced the expansion of their existing integration with Autotask Professional Services Automation [PSA]. Secondly, they announced a new integration with what had been known as Autotask Endpoint Management (AEM), and which is now been rebadged as Datto RMM.
“We have had an integration for years with the Autotask PSA,” said Colin Knox, Passportal’s founder and CEO. “In 2014 Autotask acquired an RMM capability by purchasing CentraStage, a U.K.-based company. They then rebranded it as Autotask Endpoint Management and took its capabilities forward significantly. Since the merger with Datto, Datto has rebranded it again, as Datto RMM, and we expect that with Datto taking it over, they will extend its capabilities even further. We have had a long-standing relationship with Datto, and they were keen on us developing this new integration.”
Knox created Passportal in 2011, to productize a tool an MSP firm that he then owned had developed to automate password management — specifically for the requirements of MSPs. Their flagship product for this is the Ocular platform, although as they have expanded, they have also added other offerings: Docs, a documentation management product; Blink, a self-service password reset tool for individual users; and Site, a resellable password management-as-a-Service.
The enhanced Autotask PSA integration is designed to provide technicians with single click access to access client documentation more efficiently.
“Others pull data into their system, and take the baseline and allow it to be linked,” Knox said. “We’ve done that same thing but taken a deeper subset, so a tech knows everything about their machine, and also bring in all of the software installed on the machine in real time. This takes the data pull-in to a different level. We have really stepped up the ability of techs to perform actions from the Ocular platform. They can request screenshots from our software, and begin to take action with the information they have at hand.”
Knox said that Passportal also extends the value they provide to Datto RMM.
“We’ve taken this farther than other companies who have dug into their system,” Knox said. “We provide two-way sync for all devices with a Quick Remote Launch capability that will let MSPs find information and solve problems faster.” The Quick Remote launch is available through RDP, VNC and Splashtop. Passportal says that it will save up to 20 per cent of technicians’ time.
Passportal’s new offerings had resonance with the MSPs at the DattoCon 18 event. Passportal won the “Best Revenue Opportunity” award, voted on by the MSPs in attendance.
Knox said that they expect the synergies from the merged Datto-Autotask entity will drive Passportal’s business farther and faster going forward.
“It brings two very large communities of MSPs together, and will make it more efficient to conduct joint marketing and sales campaigns,” he said. “Working with one organization makes it easier for us.”
The introduction of Docs made Passportal a competitor of IT Glue. Last week, Passportal also announced a new automated migration tool to port documentation from IT Glue to the Ocular platform.
“This is a fully automated tool migrator that does a comprehensive data import, to bring data from IT Glue over to our documentation management solution,” Knox said.
