HyAlto’s Datto integration follows up an earlier one with ConnectWise Manage, as the company looks to expand their MSP base through PSA integrations.
Alan Zurakowski, HyAlto’s CEO
Ottawa-based HyAlto, which makes a cloud monetization platform focused on the MSP market, has had an integration certified with Datto’s Autotask PSA. It is HyAlto’s second such integration, following their first one with ConnectWise Manage in October 2019.
The HyAlto platform simplifies cloud services management for MSPs selling VMware services, through a single pane of glass interface that automates their front and back end offices, by automatically tracking usage details, and populating it in the PSA.
“We are in a niche space – private cloud focused on VMware,” said Alan Zurakowski, HyAlto’s CEO. “We keep track of the usage down to the second. This is something that only really large MSP typically have automated. Most midsize and small MSPs do it manually, and it is typically a major pain point for them.”
Before the ConnectWise integration, HyAlto offered its platform to MSPs as a standalone service, initially focused on VMware, and then adding support for the Veeam cloud in the spring of 2019.
“When we did the ConnectWise PSA integration, that was a new market for us, and it let us go directly to MSPs with that integration,” Zurakowski said. “It worked. At the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic, we had a really solid sales funnel.”
When the pandemic hit in March, HyAlto learned that while the pandemic provided an initial boost to many MSPs’ business, the same was not true for all the vendors who served the MSP market.
“When the pandemic hit, most MSPs were being super careful with their cash flow and limiting new vendors,” Zurakowski said. “The first few months were not kind to us. Our sales funnel froze. By late summer, everyone’s private cloud business was growing, however. Both Forrester and Gartner were upping growth projections from the 20 range to the 30s. The result was that last fall, we had our best quarter ever, as MSPs were again looking for way to automate their VMware-based workflow.”
The delay between the first integration with ConnectWise and the second with Datto was deliberate, as HyAlto wanted to focus on making sure that the ConnectWise one was successful. The Datto integration, however, opens the prospect of a major boost to sales.
“The Datto integration doubled our TAM,” Zurakowski said. “We are really excited about it. We got certified two weeks ago and we are already getting some traction in the market.”
This automation of back office billing for MSPs removes inefficiencies and costs from the process. HyAlto says that their customers typically increase revenues by about 10% from revenue leakage recovery, increase core service revenue by 7%, and boost upsell revenue by 15%. It also frees up higher level tech time from administration to revenue-generating activity.
“We are really building out our feature functionality around revenue leakage on the back end, which is necessary because every MSP invoices differently,” Zurakowski said.
Zurakowski is looking forward to a strong 2021.
“We are still in startup mode, trying to grow market share, but we are getting companies all over the world looking to automate front office and back office workloads on private clouds,” he said. “We are planning on this being a growth year for us. We will consider adding integrations with other PSAs, and with Hyper-V as well. We really want to own the private cloud workflow market, and build out in the Azure public cloud as well. We are starting to scope Azure out. MSPs typically place a bet on private cloud or public cloud and we would like to address both.”
