By Datto Guest Blog 2

The Datto team experienced déjà vu this month. Thoughts from the famous scene in Jaws when Roy Scheider declared the need for a bigger boat came to mind.  Not because we felt threatened by a motorized Great White (thank goodness) but because we simply needed more room!  We needed a bigger boat!  At least next year a bigger hotel!

As MSPmentor’s own Joe Panettieri can attest, we had a full house in D.C. this month at our first Datto Partner Conference.  The week started with record setting attendance for Datto Academy Advanced Training.  Advanced Training usually caps at 28; but after we quickly sold out we expanded registration and had a record-setting 65 Datto Partners in attendance. Datto Training Manger Henry Washburn informed me that this class surpassed all others in terms of both quantity and quality.  In fact, two participants received a 102 on the exam, with another two receiving 99.  Way to go Datto Partners! The attendance and enthusiasm for this Training session exemplifies the increased interest of and relevance for Certification, both for MSPs and for their customers.  End-users place more value in providers that have Certifications. 

The two days of Training led directly to the Partner Conference—starting with a Welcome Reception.  At the reception were all Datto team members, including our Founder and CEO Austin McChord, the Datto Executive Team, Conference Speakers, including new Datto Board Member Steve Herrod, Conference Sponsors, and more than 250 Datto Partners from North America.

The highlight for most attendees was Austin’s Keynote on the opening day.  He discussed the state of the backup, disaster recovery(BDR) market, the

growth of Datto, where Datto is today and its plans for the future, and Datto’s take on compliance and HIPAA (yes, we sign Business Associate Agreements!).  If you’re not a Datto Partner yet it’s time to take another look, it’s going to be an amazing 2014 and you’ll want to be along for the ride.  Austin also announced four exciting enhancements to Datto SIRIS and Datto SIRIS Lite. 

The Datto SIRIS enhancements include:

Great product announcements and valuable content are important—but every attendee wants to have fun.  Thanks to Level 3 for sponsoring Casino Night.  And thanks to our all sponsors, including AVG Technologies, Autotask, Kroll Ontrack, N-able, Spam Soap, ASCII, JoomConnect, MSP-CFO, DSS, Level 3, ChannelPro, CompTIA, and MSPmentor.  It couldn’t happen without you.  Hope to see all our Partners and Sponsors again next year.  We promise to get a bigger boat.

Holly Wainwright is Director of Marketing at Datto. Datto Inc. is an award-winning vendor of backup, data recovery (BDR) and intelligent business continuity (IBC) solutions, providing  technology and support to more than 5,000 channel Partners throughout North America and Europe. Datto’s hybrid-cloud BDR/IBC technology provides instant on- and off-site virtualization of servers and workstations, serving the needs of small to medium-sized businesses.