NineMinds, a Bellini Capital company focused on AI tools to help MSPs automate some ticketing functions, is rolling out a new and disruptive tool for the MSP market – an open source PSA (professional services automation) platform. CEO Robert Isaacs told ChannelE2E about the development, plans and timeline at IT Nation Connect.
Called Alga PSA, the open-source tool will be available in two main ways.
- Organizations can download it and run it on premises starting now in its preproduction state for free.
- They can also use the hosted version which will be available by the end of the year. Isaacs didn’t have exact pricing for the hosted version yet but said it should be in the range of $15 per user per month.
That’s a disruptive price for the PSA market.
“The small MSP doesn’t want to sign a 3-year contract,” Isaacs told ChannelE2E, poking at the existing MSP tools platform vendors. He said that as an open source tool, Alga would not come with a contract. Isaacs added that Alga is designed to remove some of the friction MSPs experience from existing PSAs available today.
If Robert Isaacs’ name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he was one of the key engineers at ConnectWise for years, helping to acquire and build the original suite of tools offered by the company to MSPs, including those that came from LabTech. Alga is not his first PSA. He is backed in the business by his former boss and the founder and former CEO of ConnectWise, Arnie Bellini, who now runs investment firm Bellini Capital. Last year, Bellini told ChannelE2E that the MSP tools market today lacks innovation and he’s coming back after a five-year hiatus (during which he was subject to a non-compete after selling ConnectWise) and he plans to shake things up.
This open source PSA is the first tool from a Bellini Capital company that goes head-to-head against one of ConnectWise’s primary platforms.
The Alga PSA tool starts with the foundations of basic PSA ticketing, Isaacs said, including time-based ticketing which then flows into billing and invoicing. He plans to expand it to also include other essential MSP functions such as RMM (remote monitoring and management).
The tool debuts in a competitive market against participants including ConnectWise, Kaseya, Atera, HaloPSA, Synchro and others. Isaacs noted that launching a PSA into that existing field as a startup would be extremely difficult – unless it were launched as an open source tool, freely available to all.
“There's pragmatism here, because this is a really entrenched market, very well financed for other companies,” he said. “So in a sense, the strategy is the right one from a business perspective.”
The hosting model is the revenue model. But Isaacs said he also at the period of his life where he wants to make an impact.
Alga PSA Origin Story
Robert Isaacs’ NineMinds company had been working on an AI tool that would integrate with the conventional MSP tool platforms that were already out there from ConnectWise, Kaseya, N-able and the rest. But the integration with these tools got complicated. The other vendors weren’t making it easy. To get access to the APIs, you needed to sign NDAs and sometimes even non-compete agreements that extended for years, he said.
Isaacs decided to take advantage of that situation and build something new – software that offers the low-friction experience that modern applications provide. His PSA would be built as an open-source tool and would incorporate those AI capabilities he’s been trying to offer MSPs.
Alga’s open-source approach also removes another objection often encountered by smaller newer vendors – what happens if that vendor goes belly up? As open source, anyone can continue to use the tool on their own hardware, even if NineMinds disappears tomorrow. That should provide some assurance to MSPs that want to experiment with the tool. (But also, being backed by Isaacs and Bellini could provide a lot of reassurance, too.)
As a new open-source product, Isaacs doesn’t think that any sizable MSP will rip and replace what they already have. But they may run a side project to test the software.
Still, this is very new, and no MSPs are using this tool. Yet. Isaacs is rolling it out at IT Nation Connect this week.
MSPs, who are tinkerers after all, may also want to contribute to the open-source code. Isaacs said there is a community on GitHub where companies can download Alga PSA, discuss and suggest features, and even contribute.
Kaseya 365’s bundle of core MSP tools for a discounted price may have been a market disrupting announcement earlier this year. But Alga PSA’s free on-premises or hosted low-cost PSA offering could go a step further – democratizing MSP tools, their development and vendor contracts.
