Software startup DataGlu is betting that legacy professional services automation platforms aren’t nimble enough to adapt to the age of AI.
The year-old company launched a PSA, courting managed services providers with the promise of data sovereignty and minimal technical debt, the company announced last week.
“We've really reimagined the PSA from the ground up,” DataGlu Cofounder and Tetra Labs Cofounder Vincent LaRocca Jr. told Channel Dive.
Software development firm Tetra Labs built the platform, which DataGlu styles as a potential replacement for both PSA and customer relationship management systems. Tetra’s use of AI in development cuts 30 to 40% of the cost MSPs would normally incur receiving custom configuration from a legacy vendor.
“You own your data, you own your AI, you own your compute and you have full control over your security and where your data goes,” LaRocca said.
The idea stemmed from LaRocca’s own frustrations integrating with a PSA at the managed service provider Innovative Network Solutions. LaRocca said he tried to integrate AI systems into Kaseya’s Autotask.
“We realized, ‘This isn't possible because I don't have control over this data layer,’” LaRocca said. “It's a 2008 SQL database. Obviously, a 2008 SQL database was not created with interacting with AI in mind.”
DataGlu gives MSPs unfettered access to their data and the ability to pull it at no cost. The platform also favors private AI instances where customers integrate their preferred LLM into the workflow.
“If you like Claude and you want to use Claude, you can do that; if you like OpenAI and you want to bring that, you can do that,” LaRocca said.
The son of a managed security services provider CEO, LaRocca started his career as a propulsion engineer and moved into automation engineering at the turn of the decade.
LaRocca met his two future Tetra cofounders at an AI consultancy in 2020. By the time they formed Tetra in 2025, they had a strong sense of how AI would reshape the software market.
“Most software that was built prior to GPT-3 coming out probably wouldn't survive because the underlying architecture and the way that they were built would not be able to integrate into AI properly,” he said.
The key was to build foundational software components and use AI to iterate new products quickly. Perhaps more importantly, they believed open source would win out.
“People are going to want to own their data,” he said. “They're going to want to own the models and the compute, and they're not going to put up with transactional token costs and not understanding their costs month to month based on their usage, and sending their data somewhere that they don't understand.”
DataGlu enlisted Bill Patchett as its CRO. Patchett is a fellow Connecticut resident and the CEO of technology services distributor P2 Software Sales and Managed Services. Patchett’s TSD has worked closely with MSPs like Innovative over the years to help them sell voice and data products from telecom carriers, but more recently P2 has become a distributor of software vendors like Trustifi and Coro.
Patchett said he was surprised to learn from LaRocca that Innovative had been required to pay its PSA vendor to retrieve its own data.
“I thought that was odd, and then when they started talking about what they were going to do and the opportunity in the channel, that's when I really got excited,” Patchett said.
Patchett started talking to MSPs in his base about their PSAs and found the same dissatisfaction LaRocca expressed.
“I saw the opportunity,” Patchett said. “There's a big opportunity here to displace a couple of giants.”
DataGlu is the joint effort of multiple Connecticut-based companies. Innovative Network Solutions CEO Imtiaz Allie is a partner at the company, and LaRocca’s father Vinnie LaRocca Sr., who runs MSSP CyberSecOP, is the CEO.
The multiple ties to the MSP industry helped DataGlu test its platform.
“We had a benefit of being able to work side by side with a with a true MSP partner and build out all of the things that they needed to run real live production, while still being able to maintain the changes and the foundational things that we wanted to do with the product,” LaRocca Jr. said.
DataGlu is deploying its platform to other MSPs. Patchett said he will sign DataGlu up as a vendor with another TSD and likely will offer it on P2’s own line card. His team is also discussing a white-label option for MSPs.
