In the wake of LogMeIn’s recent announcement to discontinue its free remote desktop access software, some companies like AVG have been taking this opportunity to tell MSPs that alternatives do exist. Mike Foreman, vice president of global sales for AVG, mentioned in a blog post that:
“To those resellers who feel they have been left high and dry I would urge you to take a close look at AVG CloudCare™. Yes, we offer you a free remote desktop that does exactly the same as LogMeIn Free. But there’s more, much more besides.”
AVG’s Remote IT product claims to accomplish what LogMeIn’s will do, plus it will be integrated with a larger suite of MSP enabling tools, namely AVG’s CloudCare. According to Foreman:
“In fact AVG RemoteIT’s functionality goes well beyond that of LogMeIn Free and more closely resembles that of a ‘lite’ remote monitoring & management (RMM) tool. For example, it gives administrators a quick and easy way to initiate a remote control session.”
This will likely be a big factor for those LogMeIn MSPs who were already using AVG or Level Platforms (acquired by AVG last year), but it may not be enough to get those LogMeIn MSPs who are already using a RMM platform.
While free ware is very common amongst the more enterprising MSPs, the one downside is that free ware can go away. That’s not to say that paid software tools (like Dell’s PacketTrap) can’t also perform their own disappearing act, much to the dismay of MSPs. However, in my own discussions with MSPs, remote access tools like LogMeIn’s application are not only commonly used, but they are often a very important part of what MSPs do each and every day.
AVG, who has been very busy since 2013 building up some serious MSP capabilities, is not letting this opportunity slip by. It will be interesting to see how the MSPs respond and whether AVG picks up business from this initiative.