Amid a global pandemic that has changed the way that the world works, managed services providers capable of supporting organizations’ complex IT needs have seen demand rocket. But who supports the MSPs themselves? SuperOps.ai, founded in Claymont in the U.S. less than two years ago, is up for the job; its investors are today announcing a $14 million funding round that it hopes will give it the firepower required to grow at pace.
“For every business, challenges such as the move to remote working made managing their IT much more difficult during Covid-19 crisis,” says Arvind Parthiban, the company’s cofounder and CEO. “Many have turned to MSPs in response, but MSPs also need to modernise and acquire new tools.”
SuperOps.ai’s platform aims to help MSPs do exactly that, with a suite of tools that MSPs can use to provide a better service to their customers. Capabilities include remote monitoring and management software to maintain IT systems, such as networks, servers, desktops and mobile devices, wherever the MSP is based, and professional service automation so that MSPs can manage their client’s projects, billing, assets and inventory.
However, Parthiban believes the platform’s most important point of competitive differentiation is its artificial intelligence tools. As MSPs take on clients, they are responsible for monitoring ever larger numbers of systems, machines and networks, he points out, and receive a constant stream of feedback from clients’ infrastructure that needs investigating. SuperOps.ai’s tools automatically sort through this feedback to identify the anomalies that should be prioritized for attention, and to direct the case to the right person.
“MSPs are finding it increasingly difficult to see through the noise,” explains Parthiban. “That gets in the way of them responding to their customers with the speed and agility that is expected of them.” Those lacking the this ability may soon find clients deserting them in favor of competitors.
SuperOps co-founders Jayakumar Karumbasalam and Arvind Parthiban
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The good news for Parthiban and his business is that there is plenty of growth in the MSP market to aim at. With more and more organizations accepting that managing the sophisticated IT they now need is beyond them, many MSPs are seeing new business accelerate. Worldwide, the managed services market is now expected to grow at an annual rate of 12.6% over the next six years – in which case, by 2028, it could be worth as much as $557.10 billion.
To flourish while growing at this sort of speed, MSPs are going to need cutting-edge tools, but Parthiban believes legacy players in the sector are letting them down. “The MSP space is in desperate need of innovation and modern software to replace the existing legacy solutions – customers have been stuck with bloated and extremely outdated on-premise tools,” he complains. “Our, AI-powered, cloud-based software is more efficient and effective.”
The company developed its platform in collaboration with the MSP sector, Parthiban points out, spending much of last year in beta mode working with around 150 MSPs to finetune the product.
Indeed, SuperOps.ai has yet to take its product to market with a full-scale launch. It has a small number of paying customers, but is now on the verge of a fully fledged commercial release.
The investment announced today will help with that, as the company targets MSPs in English-speaking markets around the world, starting with the US and the UK. The money is coming from a fund-raising round led by Addition and Tanglin Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors who have previously put up $3 million. They include Matrix Partners India and Elevation Capital, as well as a number of angel investors.
There is a lot of ground to cover. One feature of the MSP market is its fragmentation – there are 150,000 firms operating worldwide by some estimates. Still, that plays to SuperOps.ai’s strengths: the vast majority of these MSPs are small businesses with a handful of technicians – exactly the kind of constituency looking to buy in modern and innovative tools.
