Pia has officially made its AI-powered robotic process automation solution for MSPs available in the U.S. for the first time.
The key milestone for the young company, a startup founded by executives at Australian managed services leader Virtual IT Group, comes some four months after the vendor first unveiled its “cognitive digital employee” at a ChannelPro SMB Forum event in the District of Columbia.
Called Pia aiDesk, the new system uses machine learning and natural language processing to analyze, route, and resolve level 1 and 2 service tickets including new user creation, password resets, printer setups, and VPN configuration. Such chores can consume up to 75% of an average technician’s day, according to Nic Ferraro, Pia’s COO.
“A significant amount of service desk engineer time is spent on these repetitive tasks,” he says, adding that aiDesk enables users to resolve such tickets up to eight times faster and improve ticket closure rates by some 400%. In doing so, Ferraro continues, the solution lowers business costs, enhances consistency in client service outcomes, improves employee satisfaction, and frees up resources for more complex and profitable activities.
Pia has a global patent for the advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence technology that power aiDesk.
At present, the new system comes with over 50 automation packages and more than 60 integrations with products from Citrix, IT Glue, Mimecast, RingCentral, and Rhipe, among others, as well as Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Azure Virtual Desktop. Connections to ticketing systems from ConnectWise, HaloPSA, Kaseya, Kaseya’s Datto unit, and ServiceNow, according to Ferraro, allow administrators to use Pia without adjusting familiar workflows.
Integrations with cloud distributors Pax8 and Ingram Micro, as well as 8×8, Barracuda, Fortinet, ConnectWise’s ITBoost documentation platform, and others, are currently in development, as are automations for agreement management and other MSP processes.
aiDesk complies with guidelines defined in the SOC 2 and ISO 27001 standards, Pia says, as well as the European Union’s GDPR regulation.
Pia Canvas, a separate product designed to help employees with limited technical skills resolve tickets, is currently in beta testing. Additional products for automating network operations centers, security operations centers, and firewall management are in the company’s pipeline as well.
In the few brief months since introducing itself to the channel, Pia has collected 49 partners on three continents, the company says. Its goal is to reach 500 partners by the end of this year.
Long a key to productivity, scalability, and growth for MSPs, automation is an even more critical need at a time when skilled technicians are extremely difficult to find and retain. Tech industry unemployment stood at just 1.8% last month, according to CompTIA, versus 3.5% for U.S. workers overall.
Lifecycle Insights, Liongard, MSPbots.ai, Rewst, and UiPath are all among many companies seeking to help channel pros get more done with overworked teams by streamlining time-consuming tasks.
Global sales of robotic process automation solutions like aiDesk will climb 17.5% this year to some $3.4 billion, according to Gartner.
