Atera Network Discovery is principally a pre-sales tool, which automates the finding of opportunities on a customer’s network, which the company says will average $89,000 MRR per MSP.
Gil Pekelman, Atera’s CEO
Atera, which makes a joint Remote Monitoring and Management [RMM], Professional Services Automation [PSA] and remote access platform, has added a network discovery capability to it. It’s not what most people would call a traditional Network Discovery capability, however. While it scans networks, its function is not principally to search for network performance issues, but to provide an automated examination of the viable business opportunities on the network – complete with a calculation of the personnel cost each will involve, and the amount of revenue they could bring in, using the MSP’s billing practices.
Gil Pekelman, Atera’s CEO, acknowledged the solution’s name probably needs a rewrite from the marketing department, because it is in essence a pre-sales tool, but a distinct and valuable one.
“It’s a new concept, which is fundamentally different from traditional network detection,” Pekelman said. “It actually DID start off this way. We started developing it because customers asked for standard network discovery functionality, but what we wound up with is fundamentally different.”
Pekelman compared Atera Network Discovery to an MSP hiring a person to go over a customer’s network, and finding out what business opportunities are there to be had.
“It consistently scans all the MSP’s networks and compares the data it collects with Atera’s own business and technical data,” he said. “It identifies with no human intervention what a business opportunity is. It then calculates the material and work component, and prices it based on the MSP’s price list, knowing what they should charge. It thus creates an action item for the MSP.”
Pekelman said that Atera Network Discovery can do traditional basic network discovery functionality, and create a report, for MSPs who want that. This capability alone gives the MSP the ability to have regular business reviews with the client.
“That’s not really the core of this though,” he stressed. “This provides a higher opportunity by identifying business opportunities in an automated fashion, without the need for any human intervention.”
Pekelman said that the overall average for each of their MSPs that can be realized with this tool is $89,000 in recurring revenue opportunities per MSP.
“The system scans for things like network upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10, router that require upgrades, to identifying what HDDs will die, and which should be moved to HDD. Each of these things is presented as an action item, and many of them lead to Annual Recurring Revenue. Each of them has a work time and cost, and Atera Network Discovery provides this information to the MSP.”
Pekelman indicated that the $89,000 figure is based on a calculation of the average value to their MSPs, with the number significantly lower for the very small, and greater for the very large.
Atera Network Discovery technology can be activated immediately for $39 per user, per month.
