Camber Partners Backs Ottawa’s Augmentt to Accelerate SaaS Management for MSPs
Key Takeaways
- Augmentt has secured a strategic growth investment from San Francisco-based Camber Partners.
- The partnership aims to help Managed Service Providers (MSPs) transition from device-centric to SaaS-centric management.
- Camber Partners brings an operator-led model, offering operational expertise in product-led growth and data science.
- The deal highlights the increasing market demand for solutions that combat shadow IT and SaaS sprawl in the SMB sector.
The landscape of managed IT services is undergoing a fundamental shift, moving away from the traditional focus on hardware and local servers toward a cloud-first reality. Validating this market evolution, Augmentt, an Ottawa-based SaaS platform designed to help Managed Service Providers (MSPs) control and secure cloud applications, has secured a significant strategic partnership. The investment comes from Camber Partners, a growth equity firm renowned for its data-driven, operator-led approach to scaling software companies.
This transaction represents more than a simple capital infusion; it signals the maturing of the SaaS Management Platform (SMP) category. For decades, MSPs have relied heavily on Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools to maintain networks and endpoints. However, as small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) aggressively adopt cloud applications, the traditional perimeter of IT security has dissolved. Augmentt was founded to address this specific visibility gap, providing MSPs with the tooling necessary to audit, manage, and secure the disparate SaaS applications used by their clients.
The involvement of Camber Partners adds a distinct layer of strategic value to Augmentt’s trajectory. Unlike traditional private equity firms that may focus strictly on financial engineering, Camber positions itself as an operator-led investor. The firm specializes in Product-Led Growth (PLG) and leverages a proprietary data science platform to help its portfolio companies optimize marketing, sales, and product development. For an emerging leader like Augmentt, this operational support is critical for scaling its go-to-market strategies and penetrating the highly competitive global MSP channel.
The pedigree of Augmentt’s leadership team played a pivotal role in attracting such a specialized investor. Founded by Derik Belair and Gavin Garbutt, the company is steered by veterans of the MSP industry. Both founders held instrumental roles at N-able, one of the sector's major success stories. Their deep understanding of the pain points MSPs face—specifically the inability to see or manage "shadow IT"—has allowed Augmentt to build a platform that resonates with service providers looking to modernize their offerings and protect their margins.
Shadow IT, the practice of employees adopting software without IT approval, poses significant security and compliance risks, from data leakage to regulatory violations. By empowering MSPs to discover and rein in these unauthorized applications, Augmentt helps providers transform from reactive troubleshooters into proactive cloud advisors. This transition is essential for MSPs who wish to retain relevance and revenue in an era where the Microsoft 365 suite and third-party SaaS tools constitute the bulk of a business's digital environment.
Camber Partners’ investment serves as a major vote of confidence in this thesis. The firm, headquartered in San Francisco, specifically targets B2B SaaS companies with annual recurring revenues between $3 million and $10 million. By backing Augmentt, Camber is effectively betting that the SMP category will become as ubiquitous and essential to the MSP technology stack as RMM and Professional Services Automation (PSA) tools were in the previous decade.
The timing of the deal aligns with broader macroeconomic trends affecting the IT channel. As businesses tighten budgets and scrutinize software spend, the ability to identify unused or redundant licenses becomes a high-value service that MSPs can sell to their clients. Augmentt’s platform facilitates this optimization, allowing MSPs to deliver immediate return on investment to their customers while simultaneously hardening their security posture against SaaS-based threats.
Looking ahead, the collaboration between the Ottawa-based software innovators and the Silicon Valley growth experts is expected to accelerate product innovation. Augmentt has indicated that the resources will be used to enhance its platform capabilities, particularly in the areas of security protocols and automated SaaS management. For the broader MSP community, this signals that the tools required to manage the complex, decentralized web of modern business applications are becoming more sophisticated, backed by the capital and expertise necessary to scale globally. The partnership reinforces the idea that the future of managed services lies not in the server room, but in the seamless orchestration of the cloud ecosystem.
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