Meet Primo, a French startup that just lately raised a $3.4 million funding spherical to construct a software-as-a-service product that handles the IT wants of small and medium firms. Primo retains observe of your fleet of gadgets and might then provide help to handle it with no devoted IT supervisor.
Headline and World Founders Capital are main the funding spherical, with a number of enterprise angels additionally collaborating, similar to Arthur Waller, Romain Niccoli, Ilana Elbaz, Josef Bovet, Mathieu Birach and Romain Libeau.
Small firms often don’t have a devoted IT workforce. They have an inclination to rent their first IT supervisor once they attain 200 or 300 staff. Earlier than that, it’s a multitude. Some individuals within the workforce are “fairly good with computer systems” and might repair minor points. For heavy-duty duties, firms usually depend on outsourced IT.
When there’s a brand new rent, somebody from the HR or admin groups will be sure that the brand new worker has every thing they should get began. It usually entails ordering a brand new laptop, including a reference quantity to a spreadsheet, emailing the outsourced IT individual in order that they’ll grant entry to inside instruments, and so on.
“The complexity of IT has fully modified — it has grow to be operational. When somebody joins the workforce, there are 35 duties to do,” Primo co-founder and CEO Martin Pannier advised me. It’s a time-consuming course of and chances are high the duty record is just not even updated.
An IT companion
Primo needs to be the companion SaaS for small firms. It at the moment has 4 totally different modules that ought to velocity up and rationalize IT duties.
“Everybody has grow to be an unintentional IT supervisor. It has a number of benefits. One, it’s free. Two, it’s tremendous agile and responsive,” Pannier mentioned.
First, Primo can simplify how your organization manages laptops and different gadgets. As a substitute of ordering from totally different web sites and manually preserving observe of gadgets in a spreadsheet, Primo customers can order new laptops from Primo’s dashboard.
As Primo is linked to a number of HR info methods, it’s simple to see which laptop computer belongs to which worker. This module is free and acts as the highest of the funnel on the subject of buyer acquisition for the SaaS platform. Primo clients pay the retail value for brand spanking new laptops whereas the startup takes a lower due to wholesale pricing.
Second, Primo helps you handle gadgets remotely. For this module, the corporate works with Hexnode, a cellular gadget administration (MDM) firm. However as a substitute of showcasing a ton of choices to the top clients, Primo is specializing in the wants of small firms.
The default configuration is already fairly opinionated and may cowl the overwhelming majority of use circumstances. The laptop computer show is locked after 5 minutes, native storage is encrypted by default, computerized updates are enabled, and so on. Clients may also use Primo’s MDM module to deploy apps on the workers’ laptops.
Picture Credit: Primo
Third, Primo has a safety module with Subsequent-Technology Antivirus options (NGAV) and end-point detection and response (EDR). As soon as once more, the corporate is partnering with one other firm to carry these options.
Lastly, Primo additionally gives assist options. In that case, if an worker has an issue as a result of they spilled some water or their laptop computer received stolen, Primo handles all repairs and replacements with next-day loaner gadgets and a few insurance coverage protection.
Up subsequent, the startup needs to deal with software program IT. Large firms usually depend on an identification and entry administration product like Okta to be sure that everyone has entry to the appropriate instruments — and that former staff can’t entry Slack anymore.
But it surely’s extraordinarily advanced to implement. “Okta addresses firms from 250 to 300,000 staff. However 99% of their efforts go in the direction of the 5,000 to 300,000 phase,” Pannier mentioned.
Some firms depend on Google’s single sign-on characteristic. However that requires some improvement and guide configuration. As a substitute, Primo goes to depend on Auth0 (an organization that was acquired by Okta) for his or her entry administration merchandise. However that’s not dwell simply but.
Basically, Primo is a part of this new development of SaaS startups that bundle a bunch of merchandise in the identical platform. The thought is that issues ought to be simple and easy for small firms. They don’t need to take care of 4 totally different distributors if an organization can already cowl 95% of their wants.
Picture Credit: Primo
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