Kaseya Unveils Business Management Solution, Acquires Vorex
Kaseya today announced the Kaseya Business Management Solution (BMS), which is designed to give the company’s managed service provider partners the ability to “design, sell and deliver profitable new service offerings that address high-growth sectors of the IT market – at a market-disruptive all-inclusive price of $25 per user, per month.”
The remote monitoring and management (RMM) software provider also is offering a free one-year BMS license for all ConnectWise, Autotask and Tigerpaw Software customers.
In addition, Kaseya has acquired professional services automation (PSA) platform provider Vorex for an undisclosed sum.
So what do the announcements mean for Kaseya and its MSP partners?
Kaseya said BMS can help MSPs in a number of areas, including:
- Reduces cost and enables productivity improvements across all departments.
- Streamlines the process of marketing, selling, billing, deploying and supporting new services.
- Automates staff scheduling.
“Kaseya believes that MSPs should minimize the amount of money spent on non-revenue generating products and activities,” Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola said in a prepared statement. “Kaseya has raised the bar for improving staff productivity and business profitability by introducing Kaseya BMS at an unheard of price point.”
A Kaseya spokesperson told MSPmentor that BMS represents a combined research and development investment of $25 million by Kaseya and Vorex to “provide the premier end-to-end business management solution for MSPs.”
“We knew that we wanted to offer a PSA solution to our customers, but we felt that the current first-generation offerings had shortcomings that made them unattractive to us – and to our customers,” the spokesperson said. “We wanted to start with a fresh slate – with a ‘born-in-the-cloud’ solution that would provide our customers with ‘business agility,’ i.e. the ability to react quickly to market opportunities by rolling out new service offerings.”
Kaseya will continue to focus on developing products that adopt its “Times Twenty” initiative – $1 invested in Kaseya should yield $20 in revenue for the MSP, according to the spokesperson.
The company also expects to announce additional products and services this year designed to help its MSP partners achieve their business goals.
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These kinds of
These kinds of mergers/acquisitions made alot of sense for vendors like Autotask with Centrastage, or Connectwise with Labtech several years ago when the integration standards at the time (SOAP, COM, etc) were relatively cumbersome and resource intensive to complete a robust integration.
It also made sense from a vendor business perspective because they then had access to a “captive audience” to push adoption of the acquired solution through their existing customer base, which typically has a lower cost of sale to drive revenue growth vs. the cost of acquiring brand new customers, kind of like rolling out a new chargeable module.
But with the recent advent of Web API integration technology, it would be a little out of date to say there’s actually a technical need for a vendor to acquire another solution in order to get access to detailed source code, in order to deliver a robust integration. Those days are past.
Promys PSA for example, recently completed a Web API integration with LogicMonitor, an RMM/Infrastructure performance monitoring solution, that only took a few days. It’s also highly configurable by the customer, regarding what data is, or is not included in the integration.
So the Kaseya acquisition of Vorex is interesting news regarding further PSA/RMM industry consolidation, but regarding any benefits to the respective customer community, I’m not sure there’s much to report there.
Regards,
Jim Barnet
PROMYS
Director Sales & Marketing
Tel: 905-847-6539, ext. 2972
Cell: 647-239-2942
jbarnet@promys.com
t: @PROMYS_PSA
Congrats to Vorex.
My 5c, for
Congrats to Vorex.
My 5c, for what’s worth:
Personally, I believe this is good news on multiple fronts; for the ongoing maturity of the PSA/RMM market, for Kaseya itself, for their customers and, I hope, MSP’s that use any PSA.
I was GM for CentraStrage in the US during the merger/acquisition at CentraStage/Autotask and while its not my place to reveal any specifics I can safely say (because frankly its obvious) that figuring out how to take RMM and PSA integration to new heights not possible with just API integration was a part of the thought process; as I’m sure it will be at Kaseya and is at Connectwise. There is only so much functionality that can be easily exposed via API’s and I think all good PSA and RMM providers will continue to offer that option, not just for Vendor integration but evolved customers too. But it’s the unique things you can make happen when you have the development teams working in unison that can provide interesting differentiation, so I do believe that this acquisition gives Kaseya an opportunity to do some deep thinking on what that can be for their customers.
I personally learned the hard way in my days at Kaseya with API based integration’s into 3rd party products that long term sustainability for any integration is about far more than just API capability, it is about good commercial alignment and having a shared vision for the customers and market and how to create true joint value. I guess its the same thing that would make any business partnership successful, however it can be taken to new levels under a single shared vision at one company. Can.
So I think this creates the _potential_ for huge benefits in that regard for the customer community as long as Kaseya can grasp that opportunity, both strategically and in execution.
In the long run, I believe it will be the company that remains most true to its customers and market that will win out the day on both RMM and PSA; in my experience IT Service providers can be fiercely loyal when looked after properly. However, it will be easier done for the one that figures out how to get true advantage out of owning both pieces and no one is there yet IMHO.
I’m commenting as a longtime advocate and player in the MSP space, not sure how it plays out on the corporate/enterprise side.
As per my prior comment, I
As per my prior comment, I totally understand legacy vendors perspective based on older technology platforms, that only supported the older COM/SOAP integration methods, that “acquiring” a PSA or RMM solution was the only way to create tight integration.
Newer technology platforms supporting full Web API’s don’t have those constraints. With the Promys PSA Web API for example, literally any data element in Promys can be exposed via our web API, and so the level of integration available with any current technology RMM (or accounting system, or BI solution, etc) is quite robust, including di-directional real-time updates.
That’s the direction that Promys sees the technology world going. Promys sees the technology world becoming more open and more standards based, vs. going back to being closed and proprietary. See BYOD, IOT, and pretty much every other current technology trend I can think of.
I can understand why some vendors wouldn’t want this, but there’s no denying it’s in the customers best interest to be able to select the best RMM and PSA combo without being constrained by a proprietary integration.
Regards,
Jim Barnet
PROMYS
Director Sales & Marketing
Tel: 905-847-6539, ext. 2972
Cell: 647-239-2942
jbarnet@promys.com
t: @PROMYS_PSA