technologyreseller.co.uk 29 MSP technicians; they can hire a salesperson; they can do whatever they want. It gives them more flexibility. I think it will become difficult for MSPs that are not on this platform to be able to compete long term.” Fully integrated Voccola rejects the description of Kaseya 365 as a bundle, pointing out that it is a unified, integrated and automated platform on which Kaseya has spent billions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours of engineering time. He also bridles at the suggestion MSPs might prefer to choose best-of-breed solutions rather than committing to an integrated platform from one supplier. “We love people that want to buy best-of-breed solutions because Kaseya 365 is best-of-breed in the categories we are in – no doubt. I challenge anyone who thinks they can say Kaseya’s not best-ofbreed to take a good look under the hood of our technology. We have more engineers than all our competitors. And software is a numbers game. Yes, you need the creativity to build it, but these are mature categories. It’s not as if someone invented MDR yesterday or RMM. We know this space really well and we have more hands on keys and more resources by far than our competitors. “I would also say that in the MSP market, what makes something best of breed is not only the functionality, but the interoperability of it, the integration. You can’t automate processes for MSPs unless you integrate them. And you can’t integrate them unless you own all the software. Otherwise, you’re just sharing data through some lightweight APIs.” Proven model The obvious model for Kaseya 365, and not just its name, is Office 365 (now Microsoft 365) – an inspiration that Voccola is happy to acknowledge. “Before Office, Microsoft had Excel, Word and PowerPoint, and at that point Lotus 1-2-3 had 99% market share; WordPerfect had 90+% market share; and there was a product called Harvard Graphics that was like PowerPoint. “Microsoft said ‘what does the typical productivity worker need?’. They need to use a spreadsheet for a little bit. They need to use a word processor for a little bit. They need to build a presentation once every couple of weeks. Eventually, they’ll all need email, they’ll need a browser and they may need to make some notes. “What will make the customer happiest is for all these products to look the same and have a similar interface, similar menu bars. They want them to be integrated so that when they right click in PowerPoint and insert a table from Excel and then spellcheck the slide, it spellchecks the words in the slide as well as the words in the headers of the table. That’s integration, that’s automation. “Microsoft then said we’re going to build all this and integrate it and we’re going to sell it for less than any one of the individual modules offered by Lotus or WordPerfect. Microsoft made office productivity products accessible to everyone in the world and everybody benefitted. That’s what we’re looking to do with Kaseya 365.” Price guarantee To allay fears MSPs might have about becoming reliant on one provider, Kaseya is supporting the launch of K365 with a new Partner First Pledge. This includes several elements, notably a price lock guarantee offering reassurance to MSPs concerned about the risk of big price increases once they have moved to K365. “We recognise that concern and want to be very blunt and super-direct: we have a price lock guarantee. We contractually agree to how much we can raise prices, based on a consumer price index (CPI) uplift. It’s the CPI plus up to 5%. Historically, we’ve gone 1% to 2% above the CPI, but have specified up to 5% in case governments change what’s in the CPI so that it doesn’t reflect true inflation. I think it’s safe to say that for the foreseeable future, ours is one of the better price lock commitments you will see from any software vendor, if not the best. “The other important element of the Partner First Pledge is to offer everything on one-year or three-year contract terms. Where a customer has chosen a threeyear contract, we only raise the price at the end of the contract term, not every year. They are locked into the same price for three years. Then, in year four, the price can only go up by that CPI measure based on the price of the last year. There’s fake news in industry forums where some of our competitors are saying Kaseya will raise prices every year of a multi-year agreement. That’s absolutely not true,” says Voccola. “We have also introduced something called Catastrophic Loss Protection. We view partnership as sharing not just the upside but the downside as well, so if an MSP experiences a catastrophic loss New for EMEA Kaseya 365 and the Partner First Pledge were not the only new solutions highlighted at Kaseya DattoCon Europe. Others were: n The UK and Ireland launch of Kaseya’s Cyber Insurance Fast Track program, which pre-qualifies partners, customers and end users leveraging the Kaseya security suite for cyber coverage at discounted rates. n The expansion of Kaseya’s TruPeer business acceleration programme to Europe with the first in-person event having taken place in May. The combination of the TruMethods operational framework, sales process, marketing support and benchmarking enables participating MSPs to grow faster and with a 150% to 250% higher than average profit margin. n The launch of IT Glue Copilot, an AI engine for automating various aspects of the documentation process. n CREST certification for Vonahi’s vPenTest platform, making it the first and only platform in its category to offer CRESTcertified network penetration tests across EMEA. of a customer, let’s say a customer that accounts for 20% or 30% of their business, we do not hold the customer to their financial obligations for that customer. If they bought 500 licences for that customer, they’re not obligated for the licences associated with that. Historically, we’ve always done that but now we’re formalising it.” Other elements of the Partner First Pledge include month-to-month contracts for Datto BCDR and an extension of Kaseya’ FLEXSpend initiative to all elements of its portfolio. Introduced last year for Backup, FLEXSpend enables partners to reallocate their spend between products in line with changing needs. With Microsoft 365 as a model and an ambition to sign up tens of thousands of MSPs, how might Kaseya expand or evolve its K365 subscription in the months and years ahead? Voccola would not be drawn on future plans, other than to admit ‘this is just the beginning’. https://www.kaseya.com/
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