DataMAPt looking to recruit channel for low-cost cloud network monitoring service

DataMAPt is looking to recruit primarily VAR partners, is focused mainly on the SMB space, and pledged rock bottom pricing to partners and commitment to a channel model.

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Scott Wise, DataMAPt’s Vice President of Sales

CHICAGO — Monument CO-based DataMAPt, a software developer which makes a cloud-based, agentless and highly flexible network monitoring service aimed at the SMB market, thinks it has a strong value proposition for the channel. To that end, it has been in attendance at the CompTIA ChannelCon 2015 event, looking to bust out beyond the borders of their home state where they have done much of their business to date.

“We started in 2010 and are now in Version 3.1 of the software,” said Scott Wise, DataMAPt’s Vice President of Sales. “The founders came out of the military, specifically NORAD, where they were system and database administrators. They found a constant challenge was that they often needed different monitoring systems for different devices, and typically wound up writing their own scripts to solve the problem that the software could not.” The product they designed with DataMAPt reflects this desire for broad monitoring capabilities, while also being relatively inexpensive and simple to use.

“We have an architecture that was created in an environment where the founders knew they had no idea what they would be monitoring next, where they had to be able to handle any format, and display it on a single pane of glass,” Wise said.

Wise acknowledged that DataMAPt is working in a very mature market, but sees them having a major advantage in being totally cloud based.

“We are totally SaaS oriented with a ‘pay as you go’ basis, which appeals to users to want to pay only for what they use,” he said. “Resellers are attracted to the recurring revenue model part of it.” Wise said that DataMAPt has the Industry’s lowest per-object pricing, with monthly pricing like $6 per server, $2 per workstation and $12 per database, among the many things they monitor. They also have a-la-carte pricing, and have no contracts, set up or maintenance fees.

“The type of inexpensive remote monitoring services we offer have typically not been available on a cost model which made it feasible to offer in much of the SMB space, until now,” Wise added. He said that while their offering has the scalability to work in the enterprise, the pricing is directed at SMBs because they consider them to be the low-hanging fruit.

Wise said that DataMAPt is pledged to the channel model.

“We will take an order direct if we have to, but that is typically if it’s in an area where no VAR is available, and we want to get VARs in those areas,” he said.

The company’s primary appeal is likely to be among VAR partners, Wise said.

“We absolutely would like to do business with MSPs as well, but we recognize that it is a longer sales cycle because a lot of them have long term contracts with companies like Kaseya,” he said. “We do provide a lower price point for those MSPs who are willing to listen to us, however.”

For VARs, in addition to the lower price, Wise said DataMAPt provides other advantages.

“In my opinion, the real value we bring to a VAR is we elevate their status to their clients to make it easier for them to show their status as a trusted advisor,” he said. “We provide the stickiness they require so they can sell more of their core products. We know that we won’t be their primary revenue generator, although we do provide additional revenue. But they use us because we provide a new revenue stream and make them stickier. We also provide an approach to talk to new clients, particularly smaller ones, because this kind of service used to be price prohibitive for small clients, and this gets them in,” he said.

Today, most of their partners are limited to Colorado, and the company is looking to move well beyond that.

“I think that in North America, we could sign up a thousand partners,” Wise said. “Today, we have Colorado exposure and that’s something we want to change.”