CONNECTWISE AUTOMATION NATION — Managed service providers, solution partners, VARs and others gathered this week in Orlando for ConnectWise’s Automation Nation 2018 conference.

The theme of the conference, which drew 1,300 attendees, was “It Takes a Team,” stressing the importance of taking a team approach to developing, selling and delivering products and services.

Craig Fulton, ConnectWise‘s chief product officer, said his company is putting its product team more in front of partners because “we want our product team to get more knowledge so that they understand what the partners are going through and can move faster on enhancing the product.”

“The partners feel like we’re more in touch with them than we’ve ever been, that we’re engaging more with their community than we have in a long time,” he said. “It’s because we want to make sure that we don’t forget our partners. We want to continue to provide a platform for them that we can use while we seek out this big ecosystem.”

ConnectWise is placing more emphasis on managed security, which CEO Arnie Bellini said is important as MSPs are increasingly responsible for their end customers’ security, and laws similar to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be introduced globally.

ConnectWise’s products, such as Manage, Automate and Sell, are used by more than 22,000 partners in more than 70 countries. In the Solutions Pavilion, vendors gave demonstrations of their latest ConnectWise integrations.

Scroll through our gallery for highlights from this conference.