Australia: N-able’s Latest Managed Services Pitch
The managed services land grab continues in Australia, where many North American software providers are reaching out to VARs and MSPs down under. The latest example involves N-able VP of Sales Mike Cullen (pictured) hosting an MSP event series in Australia. But this time around there could be growing competition from MSP software providers that were funded and launched in Australia and New Zealand. Here are the details.
My first exposure to Australia’s managed services market occurred in October 2008, when I was a guest speaker on an MSP road show hosted by Kaseya and Intel. At the time, Kaseya and N-able seemed to be first movers in the Australia MSP software market — offering VARs and MSPs local feet-on-the-street support and training.
During that 2008 trip, I heard how scores of Australia VARs had become MSPs. But I also heard some market concerns. For instance, some Australia event attendees expressed doubt that U.S. trends — such as cloud and SaaS — would arrive anytime soon in Australia.
Fast forward to the present, and most of North America’s major RMM (remote monitoring and management) and PSA (professional services automation) software providers have made moves in Australia and New Zealand. Some moves involve on-premises software. Other moves involve SaaS platforms, which seem to be taking hold in larger Australia cities that have reliable broadband.
Now, N-able is back in Australia for another round of market development. VP of Sales Mike Cullen will host a regional partner summit in Sydney on July 6. Plus, N-able will debut its Masters of Managed Services Conferences on July 7 and 8 in Sydney and July 14 and 15 in Melbourne. N-able says it has roughly 175 MSP partners across Australia and New Zealand.
More Rivals Emerge
Certainly, N-able isn’t alone in the Australia and New Zealand markets. Kaseya’s Tim Dickinson is located there full-time, and during the recent Kaseya Connect User Conference in Las Vegas, Dickinson reinforced Kaseya’s continued momentum in the region.
Still, this is a multi-vendor battle with plenty of niche players. And many of the key players — such as Naverisk Ltd. and QoS-IT — are local to Australia.
Overall, I suspect the Australia MSP opportunity is roughly one-tenth that of the opportunity in North America. But that’s still a huge market opportunity. We’re also seeing MSP merger and acquisition activity across Australia. And we’ll be profiling many of Australia’s top managed services experts in our 2010 MSPmentor 250 report (here’s how to participate).
In the meantime, we’re listening closely for more MSP trends in Australia.
Sign up for MSPmentor’s weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. And follow us via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; and Twitter. Plus, check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com.
