Bob Coppedge, CEO, Simplex-IT

What was/is your general reaction to and thoughts about the announcement?

I was shocked until I wasn’t. In hindsight, you could definitely see that Datto was making themselves more attractive to a purchase through Q3-Q4 of last year. I think a key ingredient to all of this was that Datto’s stock wasn’t performing up to expectations. From the perspective of a partner, there’s no question that we will ultimately have to re-evaluate our relationship. 

Unfortunately, Kaseya has too long of a track record of souring the partnership relationship and becoming more of a vendor/reseller. I fear that the “Datto mojo” that has been built up over the past several years will quickly begin to fade and tarnish.

What do you predict the business impact will look like? The expansion?

Nobody knows. The immediate impact will be a lot of positioning to minimize the damage the announcement has done to the Datto space. I’ve never seen an announcement that was so universally negatively received by the customer base. The question is whether that will impact the buying habits of loyal Datto partners (I suspect it will).

What will this mean for partners? For the industry as a whole?

First of all, nothing lasts forever. One of the values that we (should) bring to our clients is we (should) keep track of changes in the industry (both IT in general and MSP specifically), addressing change as necessary. Anybody who buys a single solution (even <gasp> MS 365) and thinks that they’ll never have to visit that decision again is mistaken. The other thing is that Datto has (deservedly, I think) been able to build a “we’re the good guys” brand (no small part due to Rob Rae) throughout the industry. I can’t imagine that brand will survive (even if it’s a perception issue).

What will the new brand look like? Who and what will survive?

I suspect that Kaseya will attempt to minimize the changes to the brand for the first 12-24 months. From that point on, I would expect there to be some form(s) of consolidation with some of the other products/services. ConnectWise, Barracuda and SolarWinds (and their BCDR counterparts) will all try to convert partners with various offers and/or rebranding strategies. But similar actions happened in the mid-late ’90s where a lot of software products/vendors were purchased by Computer Associates. Most of those products and companies were never heard from again.