It has been roughly three months since LOGICnow unveiled LOGICcards -- a machine learning and big data technology that helps MSPs to predict future SMB customer needs.
But how is LOGICcards performing in the market? And what are the key learnings so far for LOGICnow and its managed services providers (MSPs)? We checked in with Dana Bullister, program manager for strategic data initiatives at LOGICnow and tracked down some answers.
Without revealing specific adoption stats, Bullister says LOGICcards are seeing a "steady rate" of new adoption. She expects the majority of LOGICnow's MSPs to benefit from LOGICcards insights "within the next few months." While a bit vague the statement is still impressive.
After all, in-depth analytics -- and big data, in particular -- are still relatively new to most IT service providers focused on small business customers. Yes, MSPs and VARs have long leveraged IT support dashboards. And they've built quarterly performance reports for their end customers. But LOGICcards is far more ambitious -- basically, an extendible platform that will offer more and more machine learning capabilities over time.
So far, MSPs seem to value LOGICcards' so-called collective intelligence capabilities. Collective intelligence "consolidates intel from across their own businesses" and creates a baseline to help compare the business vs overall market metrics says Bullister. "Customers say they have been using the tool to save time, open up new sales opportunities, train new technicians, and detect vulnerabilities or suboptimal settings they wouldn't otherwise have noticed."
Both LOGICnow and its MSPs are positioning the machine learning system as "the only RMM tool that delivers collective, proactive analytics."
The LOGICcard Strategy
Overall, LOGICnow will continue to shape LOGICcards to help MSPs become "better sales people, to more successfully identify opportunity, and to optimize their businesses for high growth."
Among the recent product milestones:
- The latest LOGICcards insights include unmanaged devices detected in client networks using Active Discovery, tips for optimizing the dashboard and minimizing security risk, and visualizations of business practices such as technician investment across current clients.
- Extending LOGICcards capabilities into additional LOGICnow product and service areas. For instance, LOGICcards is now bridged into the company' Service Desk product, "where most users already have access to card insights from within the Service Desk dashboard."
- In November the core Max RM product team started releasing a series of smaller, more frequent updates focused on existing features, performance improvements, and more.
Next up, LOGICnow will extended LOGICcards into additional products while also exposing more real-time recommendations (so-called "NOWactions"), and more sophisticated predictive insights. "We're also working hard to develop our underlying data infrastructure to support further, more high level and cross-business knowledge generation," says Bullister.
Data in the IT Channel
Generally speaking, the IT channel is late to the big data wave -- much in the way that VARs and MSPs were somewhat late to cloud computing.
Still, there are signs of progress all around us. Customers are seeing the value in big data projects, according to CompTIA. And a new wave of technology vendors -- names like Cloudera, HortonWorks and MapR -- has launched big data-related channel partner programs.
In many cases, channel partners are benefitting from big data without necessarily realizing it. Examples include security platforms from OpenDNS and WebRoot that leverage big data and machine learning technologies.
Data-intensive tools designed for MSPs also are catching hold. Examples include BrightGauge, ConnectSmart and MSPCFO, along with newcomer Clarity Intelligence Platform.
Traditional MSP software providers -- names like Autotask and ConnectWise -- have been adjusting their systems to more effectively display data within their systems.
But during my travels over the past four months or so, LOGICnow is the only company that put big data and machine learning center stage at its MSP-oriented partner conference. The company has also hired a complete data science team to drive LOGICcards forward.
Does the system work as advertised? On the one hand, LOGICnow isn't revealing specific adoption numbers. But on the other, LOGICnow clearly states that the majority of its MSPs will benefit from the machine learning and big data system within the next few months.
