RMM Software for MSPs: Why We Built Level

IT managed service providers (MSPs) are growing in popularity. Companies are choosing to outsource common IT tasks rather than pay the costs of operating an in-house IT team. With the growth of remote work and online collaboration, having a highly available, fast-responding IT resource is essential for most businesses. That's where MSPs excel.

MSPs can focus on solving common IT challenges quickly and effectively, often driving down costs for the companies that choose to use an MSP. However, the tradeoff is access. Since MSPs don't operate in-house, they need robust remote monitoring and management (RMM) software to be able to do their jobs.

Unfortunately, the current solutions in the RMM space are stuck with legacy choices and clunky user experiences. There's a huge opportunity to modernize RMM for MSPs and build a tool that's capable of supporting holistic IT. We built Level to solve these problems for MSPs, supporting users from anywhere, seamless connectivity, and powerful task management across many devices.

Problems with RMM for Managed Service Providers

Legacy RMM wasn't built to support the full range of flexibility a MSP needs. For instance, it can be difficult to connect or control the device you need to troubleshoot. In other cases, data might be out-of-date or outright wrong. Furthermore, current RMM solutions are bad at scheduling jobs across many devices.

When IT was mostly internal and RMMs were supporting devices at a single company, these errors weren't good, but they were tolerable. IT departments could manually identify issues or visit devices in-person.

MSPs don't have that capability. They support thousands of devices across a variety of companies. In order to run an effective managed IT solution, you need access to devices immediately from anywhere. It should be easy to install and configure devices in large batches. Most importantly, data about devices needs to be always accurate.

RMM Can Be Beautiful

In customer interviews, we have heard many times about the clunky UI and poor experience of existing RMM solutions. Additionally, existing solutions are so complex that they often require a dedicated specialist to run and configure jobs on the RMM software.

There's a huge opportunity to make RMM more intuitive, and - dare we say it? - beautiful. A seamless UI with easy-to-understand, but powerful features is at the heart of what we're building at Level.

Good design is at the heart of what we're building, because RMM is complex and we want to make the tools as easy-to-use as possible. Technicians should spend their time on high-value, strategic thinking to move the business forward. They shouldn't worry about “what button do I click?” or “how do I find that feature?”.

Good design also builds trust with the end user. Ideally, remote monitoring should be as unobtrusive as possible in a user's daily life. But when a technician needs to connect or conduct maintenance, clean and clear design can help the user identify and trust legitimate IT needs.

Addressing the Core of IT Management

We're convinced that RMM needs a paradigm shift. In order to change that paradigm, we're going to have to change some core pieces of traditional RMM. At Level, we're building the next generation of remote monitoring software that rethinks the foundations of IT management.

The goal is to bring remote monitoring into the 21st century. That starts with something as foundational as connections between devices. In the 21st century, we have the technology to directly connect devices via peer-to-peer protocols that cut out the middleman.

Another foundational opportunity to help MSPs is wider, native support across devices and operating systems. We often hear from MSPs about features that are lagging or outright missing from a device or OS in their RMM solution.

We're building Level with low-level OS access and clean APIs to update configuration, regardless of operating system. With clear ways to interact with devices, we can promote feature parity across all devices. When an MSP schedules a task, it can meet the business goals, regardless of device.

Level: For IT, By IT

We built Level this way because we know the pain. Our founders built a successful IT managed services business and felt the challenges of managing endpoints firsthand. They tried the major RMM solutions, and decided to start Level in order to solve their own problems.

We've conducted dozens of customer interviews to back us up. There's an enormous need for an intuitive solution that makes monitoring a breeze. RMM needs to evolve to meet the demands of modern, remote teams. That's why we built Level.

‍