The Next Managed Services Battleground: Africa?
MSP software providers have spent the past two or three years pushing into Europe and Australia. Now, it seems, the MSP software land grab is stretching into Africa. The latest example: ConnectWise has launched a cloud on Africa’s soil. And partners/rivals like Kaseya have been busy working closely with MSPs in South Africa. Here’s the update.
First, the latest ConnectWise Cloud move. The PSA (professional services automation) software provider now has clouds in North America, Europe, Australia and Africa. The Africa cloud was announced today. ConnectWise estimates that one-third of its 45,000 individual users run in the cloud (two-thirds run ConnectWise on-premises).
I realize there’s more than one way to go global. Strategies vary across the PSA and RMM (remote monitoring and management) market.
In the PSA space:
- ConnectWise promotes a “have it your way” on-premises and cloud approach. In previous interviews, CEO Arnie Bellini said ConnectWise built localized clouds on individual continents in order to avoid latency and regional compliance issues. Also, ConnectWise launched a Transparency Status Dashboard to help MSPs and VARs track the status of ConnectWise services.
- Autotask has a pure SaaS strategy. To the best of my knowledge, Autotask continues to host its software in New York. The SaaS platform is available worldwide. I have not heard of any latency issues abroad. I’ve checked in with Autotask to double-check how and where the SaaS platform is hosted. Updated Dec. 23, 5:15 p.m. eastern: According to Autotask, the company has multiple data centers, in the US and Europe. More are budgeted and planned for 2011. For content, Autotask uses Akamai web acceleration.
- Tigerpaw Software prefers an on-premise strategy, working with distributors and partners to push beyond the U.S. and move into markets like Australia.
The situation is more complex in the RMM market. Most of the major players offer on-premise and SaaS options, and those on-premise and SaaS offerings are going global pretty rapidly. But some emerging players are developing localized SaaS deployments. A prime example: CentraStage, a SaaS-centric RMM provider in Europe, plans to launch a SaaS instance on U.S. soil sometime in early 2011.
Africa Moves
Meanwhile, the managed services market in South Africa seems to be heating up. ConnectWise specifically pointed to Africa as a managed services opportunity today. And earlier this year, Kaseya spoke to me extensively about its growing momentum in South Africa. A key data point worth noting: Most MSPmentor 100 survey participants from South Africa run Kaseya, according to our own analysis.
No doubt, more international moves are coming. At Autoask, new CEO Mark Cattini last week specifically mentioned international opportunities as a key area of focus for 2011. Generally speaking, I sense that the North American MSP software market has matured, European expansion remains somewhat slow, Australia remains hot, while Asia and Africa seem poised for more rapid expansion.
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There are definitely some continental broadband issues with Africa. Having a local presence is key including server assets for SaaS offerings.
We are very excited about ConnectWise expanding to Africa, it will be exciting to add another clock on the wall for yet another continent and new clients abroad. I’m sure we will have a bit to learn about MSP Marketing and Websites in Africa, can’t wait for the challenge!
Chris Chase
CEO, Directive / JoomConnect
Brendan: Keep us posted as you spot trends in Africa.
Chris: Are you taking JoomConnect global? Would love to hear if you’ve already built an international client base. Joe [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com.
Best
-jp
Joe,
We are already global! JoomConnect is a ConnectWise specific application, so wherever ConnectWise goes, JoomConnect goes. We have partners on all the same continents. We have a pretty large install base in Australia especially.
The Challenge for us whenever go into a new continent is adapting features to their local markets and laws. Understanding their states and providence’s for our software amp; marketing strategies to work best with activities like capturing leads, automating email amp; print campaigns with the ConnectWise Marketing Manager and Campaign Monitor etc.
Equally important, providing quality hosting through partners in those countries where the RackSpace Cloud doesn’t exist (yet) to insure there is no hit on the SEO or latency aspects of their websites. Partners can also host everything themselves, but most want us to manage their sites.
JoomConnect goes beyond just marketing amp; lead capture with things like unified logins for 3rd party MSP client portals, support and workflow automation, we have to pay close attention to these things and do our homework when we enter a new country.
Doesn’t hurt having early adopters in these countries with a little patience for us to get JoomConnect perfectly tuned to their “local” needs. We’ve got some great partners that have helped us do just that in the past and look forward to learning all about Africa!
Anyone in Africa signed up for ConnectWise yet? You should! 🙂
-Chris Chase
CEO, Directive / JoomConnect
Chris: Thanks for educating me (and MSPmentor’s readers). I went to Australia in Oct. 2008 to attend/speak at a few MSP-centric events hosted by Intel and Kaseya. At the time I was surprised by how many resellers were becoming MSPs. Fast forward to the present and it seems like most of the major PSA and RMM companies have Australia-specific initiatives in place. So I’m not surprised by your momentum there.
Please keep us posted as you spot international milestones. And thanks for your readership.
-jp
Hi Joe,
International bandwidth into Africa, and South Africa specifically, presents the greatest challenge to the local IT market. The cost of a decent (read 2mb) line is 10 times what it is in Europe or the US. Any plan to rollout online services needs to factor in that most users will be connecting via 512k or 1mb lines. That said we do have a number of South African users on our European platform but the response times are not ideal.
We signed a local distributor based in Cape Town about a year ago and they have a number of larger “on-premise” clients. National bandwidth within South Africa (and in fact connectivity from SA to the rest of Africa) is maturing rapidly and we are soon to be launching a cloud platform with a local hosting company. Local pricing inflexibilty remains a challenge but we see no reason not to be able to make the same low-cost RMM solution that we offer to our European base, also available via an African cloud.
Regards,
Ian van Reenen
CTO, CentraStage
Ian: Thanks for educating me (and MSPmentor’s readers) a bit more re: the South Africa managed services market. I concede: I haven’t visited the region but MSPmentor is hearing from more and more readers who serve the market, so we’ll continue to watch South Africa (and Africa as a whole) more closely.
-jp
When I was VP International Sales at Concord Communications (1994-1999), I sold a significant amount of Perf Mgt Software to SP’s in South Africa to offer managed WAN and Server services. Sounds like it’s still a hot spot. Beautiful country as well!!!
Todd Hussey
http://www.MSPexcellence.com
Hi Guys,
We are a South African MSP and bandwidth is always a challenge. At the time when we were looking to move into the MSP space (about 3-4 years ago), finding a PSA was a challenge. Connectwise was not available to the local market and Autotask was hosted, but keen to engage.
Based on our bandwidth issues, we managed to get an On-Premise (Enterprise) edition of Autotask and has been working well for us, only downfall is always being a quarter behind on updates. For our RMM tool, we are now on Kaseya (2 years), prior to that we were on Level Platforms.
Todd – South Africa is awesome 🙂
Have a great holiday and merry Christmas.
Iain
South Africa
Hi Joe, International bandwidth into Africa, and South Africa specifically, presents the greatest challenge to the local IT market. The cost of a decent (read 2mb) line is 10 times what it is in Europe or the US. Any plan to rollout online services needs to factor in that most users will be connecting via 512k or 1mb lines. That said we do have a number of South African users on our European platform but the response times are not ideal. We signed a local distributor based in Cape Town about a year ago and they have a number of larger “on-premise” clients. National bandwidth within South Africa (and in fact connectivity from SA to the rest of Africa) is maturing rapidly and we are soon to be launching a cloud platform with a local hosting company. Local pricing inflexibilty remains a challenge but we see no reason not to be able to make the same low-cost RMM solution that we offer to our European base, also available via an African cloud. Regards, Ian van Reenen CTO, CentraStage