RMM and PSA vendors under pressure to change: Canalys

Analyst firm Canalys said vendors of remote monitoring and management software for endpoints, and professional services automation applications (RMM and PSA respectively) for projects, billing and other services are under pressure, and undergoing significant change.

The RMM and PSA softare form the central pillar of just about all managed service providers (MSPs) worldwide, Canalys said.

However, the RMM and PSA technologies and the vendors that provide them are under pressure from platformisation, artificial intelligence, cyberthreats, regulation and a shifting ecosystem.

MSPs need to account for more data and workloads moving to the cloud, with software shifting to recurring revenue models - licensing, billing, patch mangaement, feature integration and security are needed for that.

However, Canalys said they are "increasingly onerous for customers investing in digitalising their bsuinesses, that do not have the capabilites and resources to manage the technological part of that transformation."

Partners are wary of putting all their eggs in one vendor basket, and are under pressure to cut costs, improve profitability and are scrutinising "tool sprawl" as part of that.

Vendors meanwhile look at ways to maximise "wallet share" and change the unit economics of technologies, through bundling and platform plays, which runs counter to the direction partners are heading in.

Canalys also said AI plays a significant role for partners to automate certain tasks more natively.

This is to use AI rather than scripting and building their own automated workflows.

The analyst firm said features such as ticketing and the resolution of tickets, billing, customer reporting, backups and managed detection and response (MDR) are all in the crosshairs for vendors trying to develop a competitive edge.

RMM and PSA vendors cannot simply automate elements of partners' workflows by focusing solely on its own toolset, Canalys said.

Instead, vendors must work out how to integrate other vendors' solutions into their own products.

This adds complexity, and creates both opportunities and threats for vendors - and partners who try to decide which vendors to back in the race.

Due to today's developments, Canalys expects the RMM and PSA landscape to look very different in a decade.