Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie says the company remains committed to on-premise managed services software. But that doesn’t mean Kaseya is ignoring the SaaS (software as a service) opportunity. Although “official” SaaS details have yet to be announced, Kaseya COO Tim McMullen offered some thoughts regarding the SaaS road ahead.

Based on a “Tonight Show” style executive panel at the Kaseya Connect User Conference this morning, it sounds to me like Kaseya has no plans to shift its managed services platform from an on-premise model to a SaaS model.

The strategy is in stark contrast to ongoing developments at Kaseya rivals like Level Platforms and N-able, which offer on-premise and SaaS managed services options. And some Kaseya partners, such as Autotask, are purely SaaS by design.

Still, Kaseya isn’t ignoring SaaS. Instead, it sounds like McMullen is leading an effort to develop a new family of SaaS-oriented products. Potential solutions mentioned by McMullen include backup in the cloud and endpoint security management.

On the endpoint security front, I need to ask McMullen some follow-up questions. I’m unclear as to whether the effort will involve SaaS software or Kaseya’s services organization — or both.

One side note: McMullen mentioned a forthcoming customer support portal to help customers (and MSPs) manage support tickets.

I hope to grab some time with McMullen later today (May 27) or May 28. Stay tuned for more Kaseya SaaS perspectives.

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