Building higher tier service offerings with cost-effective, proactive monitoring

With MSPs under pressure to transition from traditional break-fix support to higher value advisory and technology services, Paessler’s PRTG platform presents an opportunity to deliver proactive monitoring, performance optimisation and preventative maintenance, without increasing headcount or operational costs.

Available for the first time under a predictable opex pricing model, the Paessler platform provides visibility across IT, OT and IoT environments from a single interface, monitoring networks, servers, cloud services, applications and industrial systems, including SCADA-connected infrastructure.

Support within the platform for a wide range of protocols allows MSPs to monitor traditional IT environments and industrial technology systems without complex deployments. They can also detect unusual traffic patterns and support compliance reporting across the NIS2 Directive and ISO27001 information security management system standard, helping businesses in regulated industries such as finance and healthcare to improve their cybersecurity posture.

A 30% reduction in network troubleshooting time

The platform is already proven in customer deployments to improve infrastructure visibility and accelerate response and resolution. For example, agriculture technology provider Raven Industries has used threshold-based alerting and historical monitoring data to reduce the time spent troubleshooting network problems by 30%, while IT services provider Compuquip saved time and resources and strengthened its ability to deliver reliable services to 300-plus customers.

“Our PRTG platform differentiates itself through ease of deployment and fast time-to-value, combined with broad out-of-the-box monitoring coverage,” explains Edward Knight, Director Global MSP Sales, Paessler. “Custom dashboards, advanced alerting, and automation allow MSPs to detect performance degradation early and respond before issues impact customers.”

Moving from reactive troubleshooting to proactive management

By continuously collecting telemetry data from on-premises, cloud, remote and OT environments, the PRTG platform enables MSPs to move beyond reactive troubleshooting to a proactive management model without increasing headcount or operational costs.

With earlier detection of anomalies and the ability to capture and analyse trends through the PRTG Network Monitor, MSPs can reduce unplanned downtime, improve SLA performance and provide deeper visibility into client environments. As a result, they can move to predictive maintenance, identifying issues before thresholds are breached and positioning themselves to have more strategic conversations with customers about what they can offer. 

In addition, the platform integrates seamlessly with existing MSP toolchains that deliver remote monitoring and management, professional services automation and IT service management, helping automate ticketing, streamline and streamline workflows.

Rapid scaling across multiple customer environments

Through the platform’s automation capabilities, MSPs can accelerate discovery when onboarding new clients or expanding services, making scaling monitoring across multiple customer environments fast and straightforward.

MSPs are also able to avoid the additional management overhead and operational complexity associated with agent-based deployments, with the platform’s agentless architecture making it easy to deploy and scale across multiple clients and sites.

In addition, with support for multi-tenant MSP environments, the PRTG platform enables MSPs to monitor multiple client environments under a single platform rather than manage separate licences for each customer. 

Packaging monitoring as a profitable revenue stream

With Paessler’s offering, MSPs can overcome the challenge of packaging and monetising monitoring as a profitable, recurring revenue stream.

The platform is designed to support the creation of structured, profitable service offerings with clear pricing, reporting and value propositions, and which deliver measurable outcomes to customers. 

By accessing the platform under an opex model, MSPs can treat monitoring as a recurring monthly or annual cost rather than a large upfront capital investment.

“This structure better supports cash flow, simplifies internal budgeting, and aligns more naturally with the subscription-based billing models many MSPs use with their customers,” explains Knight. 

The platform also uses a scalable sensor-based model, allowing service providers to start with a modest sensor count and expand capacity as customer environments grow or as new clients are added.

MSPs can grow at their own pace, for example, starting with around 10,000 sensors and increasing in increments as monitoring requirements expand.

The new MSP edition also provides flexible billing and service packaging options, which allows providers to build subscription-based service offerings that bundle monitoring, alerting, reporting, and additional value-added services under their own pricing and margin structures.

“Importantly, the subscription includes the full PRTG feature set, meaning MSPs do not need to purchase separate maintenance or upgrade packages,” adds Knight. 

“This simplifies the offering for both service providers and their customers while avoiding unexpected costs.”

With infrastructure environments becoming more complex, adding advanced monitoring to their service portfolio can differentiate MSPs from their competitors and entrench them as valued contributors to their customers’ technology strategies.

Discover how to turn monitoring into a competitive advantage and drive long-term growth. Get in touch with HAT Distrubution today.