Behind Kaseya’s Vision for One-Stop Managed Services
May 6, 2019
Kaseya raised a massive funding round to fuel its M&A activities. CEO Fred Voccola laid out the vision for creating a one-stop managed service company in this recent POD2112 podcast.
Channelnomics Staff
Managed service platform vendor Kaseya is already putting its newfound M&A war chest to work, this time with the acquisition of ID Agent for monitoring the dark Web for security threats.
Last week, Kaseya surprised the channel when it announced a fresh infusion of $500 million in funding from investors to fuel its growth through a mergers and acquisition strategy.
The amount is what was surprising, not the strategy. Over the past 18 months, Kaseya made several investments to expand its capabilities through the acquisition of companies such as Unitrends (backup), Spanning Cloud Apps (cloud-to-cloud backup), RapidFire Tools (IT assessment), and IT Glue (documentation management).
Kaseya isn’t shy about its ambitions for building out a portfolio of technologies and features that create end-to-end managed service solutions for its MSP partners. In a September 2018 podcast with The 2112 Group, CEO Fred Voccola laid out his vision for creating a “Swiss Army knife” of managed services that allows MSPs to get everything they need from Kaseya.
In theory, the Swiss Army knife – or one-stop-shop – approach makes sense. Rather than integrating a number of disparate applications, MSPs can source all of their resources from a single vendor to simplify interoperability, management, and support. Moreover, the one-stop-shop approach, in theory, simplifies billing, revenue modeling, and time to market.
The challenge facing Kaseya and other managed service platform vendors, such as Continuum, ConnectWise, and Datto, is creating flexible portfolios that meet the dynamic needs of different MSPs and their customers. In the history of the technology industry, many vendors sought to build the one-stop shop only to find that partners and customers prefer the “best of breed” approach, in which systems are built with market-leading products by multiple vendors.
One-stop shops versus best of breed isn’t a simple argument to resolve. Nevertheless, Kaseya and Voccola – as expressed during the POD2112 conversation – believe they can create the best managed service stack that remains flexible for different needs.
Take a listen to Voccola’s vision on POD2112, below.
Last week, Kaseya surprised the channel when it announced a fresh infusion of $500 million in funding from investors to fuel its growth through a mergers and acquisition strategy.
The amount is what was surprising, not the strategy. Over the past 18 months, Kaseya made several investments to expand its capabilities through the acquisition of companies such as Unitrends (backup), Spanning Cloud Apps (cloud-to-cloud backup), RapidFire Tools (IT assessment), and IT Glue (documentation management).
Kaseya isn’t shy about its ambitions for building out a portfolio of technologies and features that create end-to-end managed service solutions for its MSP partners. In a September 2018 podcast with The 2112 Group, CEO Fred Voccola laid out his vision for creating a “Swiss Army knife” of managed services that allows MSPs to get everything they need from Kaseya.
In theory, the Swiss Army knife – or one-stop-shop – approach makes sense. Rather than integrating a number of disparate applications, MSPs can source all of their resources from a single vendor to simplify interoperability, management, and support. Moreover, the one-stop-shop approach, in theory, simplifies billing, revenue modeling, and time to market.
The challenge facing Kaseya and other managed service platform vendors, such as Continuum, ConnectWise, and Datto, is creating flexible portfolios that meet the dynamic needs of different MSPs and their customers. In the history of the technology industry, many vendors sought to build the one-stop shop only to find that partners and customers prefer the “best of breed” approach, in which systems are built with market-leading products by multiple vendors.
One-stop shops versus best of breed isn’t a simple argument to resolve. Nevertheless, Kaseya and Voccola – as expressed during the POD2112 conversation – believe they can create the best managed service stack that remains flexible for different needs.
Take a listen to Voccola’s vision on POD2112, below.