Kaseya revealed two big announcements yesterday at the annual DattoCon conference in Miami: Kaseya 365 User, an all-in-one bundle to prevent, respond to, and recover from threats to user identity and security; and the acquisition of cloud detection and response vendor SaaS Alerts.
Kaseya 365 User bundles five solutions: phishing defense (Graphus), security awareness training (BullPhish ID), credential monitoring (Dark Web ID), SaaS backup (Spanning or Backupify), and cloud detection and response (SaaS Alerts). It’s available for an introductory price of $2.79 per user.
Kaseya 365 User follows on the heels of Kaseya 365 Endpoint, a subscription bundle announced in April that marked the first phase of Kaseya’s strategic plan to change the unit economics for MSPs by driving down costs and driving up efficiency, with a goal of tripling profits. During the keynote address yesterday, CEO Fred Voccola also announced that Kaseya is adding DNS filtering to Kaseya 365 for free; that will be available in December.
MSP Success asked MSP business owners and decisions to weigh in on their initial reactions to Kaseya 365 User and Kaseya’s strategic roadmap. Here’s what they had to say.
Kaseya 365 User – Doing the Math
Will Slappey, CEO of IT Voice, an MSP in Birmingham, Alabama, says he is pleased that the $2.79 pricing will be for all partners, “which is pretty impactful. When they rolled out the original version of 365 [Endpoint], I think there was some pushback because not everybody got the advertised price. So it sounds like Kaseya heard that feedback and they’ve responded. I think that’s really important too, especially for some of the small MSPs. That it gives them a way to continue to compete with the biggest guys because they’re getting that same price that everybody else is getting.”
Mike Bazaar, who recently merged his MSP with Vector Choice, an MSP headquartered in Atlanta, and is now chief revenue officer there, says the acquisition of SaaS Alerts and its inclusion in Kaseya 365 User “fills a real hole. We’ve been a SaaS Alerts partner for a while. I like to see that it was going into Kaseya 365 User. I know it’s Kaseya’s mission to really transform the market and [with] these all-inclusive bundles around the endpoint, the user, and then [what may be] coming, I think it’ll help reshape the market.”
Vector Choice did upgrade to Kaseya 365 Endpoint, and Bazar says that while “it didn’t necessarily change our immediate profit equation, it gave us more licenses and other things that allows us to increase profits as we go forward.”
He says they’ll likely move to Kaseya 365 User, but will have to do the math first. “We haven’t talked to our account rep in terms of how they’re going to roll it out in terms of minimum quantities around the licensing and everything else. I think it’s a no-brainer for any new deal going forward.” But in terms of migrating from existing products, he says they’ll have to look at when contracts expire and when upgrading makes sense. “It’s a math problem, not a desire problem. I’m sure we’ll end up there … as contracts expire on other things.”
For Kris Kilgard, division president of Locknet, an MSP based in Onalaska, Wisconsin, the Kaseya 365 User announcement is “not surprising with the movement to cloud apps, but then also just making more resources available to us as MSPs with a single vendor I think is critical.” Locknet recently signed up for Kaseya 365 Endpoint and he says they will vet Kaseya 365 User.
The Endpoint Additions – A Crowd Pleaser
The addition of DNS and web filtering to Kaseya 365 Endpoint got some enthusiastic applause during the keynote. “What I’m thrilled about is they keep adding to Kaseya 365 [Endpoint], which we subscribed to earlier in the year,” says Eric Shorr, CEO and president of Secure Future Tech Solutions, an MSP in Warwick, Rhode Island. “I did some quick math and with the addition of DNS filtering to Kaseya 365, I am now going to save about $1,200 a month because I don’t have to use a competitor’s product because it’s included in the subscription that I already have. So that’s the kind of thing that’s going to help drive our profits, which is fantastic. And it’s all in one place, which is also good too, because I am starting to understand the importance of having an integrated tool set to make it easier for us, because we’re constantly battling with integrations and vendors, trying to get [them] to work.”
While Bazar says he wants to test the DNS filtering first before rolling it out, “DNS filtering is an easy add-on, and so I think it’s a good ad. We use other DNS filtering products, that’s why I say we’ll do a little testing and if it stands up against it, there’s no reason to keep paying for another product. As opposed to savings over time, profitability over time, this will be savings pretty quickly.”
The Concerns – Downward Pricing Pressure and Eggs in One Basket
Both Bazar and Kilgard expressed some concern that the low pricing of Kaseya 365 User will enable competitors to undercut pricing, sacrificing profits for short-term gains.
“My concern is a whole bunch of people, especially smaller MSPs, are going to probably try to sell it cheap, [because] they got a deal,” says Bazar. “And I think that’s part of the reason Fred [Voccola] talked a lot about profit. There’s no barrier to entry to be an MSP; I can grab my laptop and say I’m an MSP. So that’s always my concern when you see a cheap product that’s a good product … you hate to see downward pricing pressure from people that are just trying to make a quick buck.”
Kilgard agrees. “The one challenge I think that we’re going to have is to maintain our pricing because there will be people taking advantage of the lower cost of goods and therefore lowering their pricing. So it’ll be important that we as an industry keep our pricing where it’s at and appreciate those profit gains.”
Shorr, however, says he’s not concerned. “There are a lot of MSPs out there that sell on price. That’s not something that we’re doing. We’re offering our expertise and our value to our clients. So there may be a race to the bottom, but that’s not a sustainable model for MSPs. … Any particular client that’s interested in just price and nothing else, they’re not really a good fit for what we’re doing at Secure Future Tech.”
As for going all in with an integrated bundle vs. a best-of-breed approach, Shorr says this: “We’re in business to help our clients, and we certainly want to provide best of class, but you also have to balance that with an offering that’s going to be competitive and something where you can make money too. And so that’s the balance, right? Obviously, we’re not going to deploy something that’s not right or isn’t a good fit for our clients, but is it good enough? I think the answer is yes, and it keeps getting better. And that’s the important part; Kaseya seems to be working on things and improving them constantly.”
Adds Kilgard, “We’ve been best of breed for a long time, and we still went with Kaseya 365 [Endpoint], but we’re still utilizing a different antivirus, as an example. But for smaller MSPs, I think having a single package gets you a long way there and serves a certain client profile, frankly.”
Slappey, too, says the economics need to be weighed. “If you’re making good margin and your customer’s got the software that they need to be secured and for you to manage their environment, that’s pretty powerful. I do know some people [say] well, this software is better, and that software is better, and they’re not completely wrong. But when you compare the option of a customer picking and choosing between which of the modules that you’re going to have for them and having less total software [because of budget constraints] vs. getting the total Kaseya bundle, I think is a big difference maker.”
The Partner Experience
Asked about the experience of being a Kaseya partner, Bazar says, “I think a lot of partnerships are what you make of them, how much you work with and talk to your account managers. I think at the end of the day, what Kaseya is doing is good for the industry. …The strategy they have is a really good strategy. Our relationship with Kaseya has been a good relationship. I think they’ve always tried to work with us, and that’s why I say it’s that relationship with your account manager and the people … so you can get the things done that you need to get done.”
Kilgard agrees. “As a partner, we’re treated very well. We’ve got escalation points when we need to, and we use those, but we use them wisely.”
For Shorr’s part, he became a Kaseya partner through acquisition. “We were a Datto partner, and we were doing business with some other companies that got acquired by Kaseya. So at first I was concerned, but now that we’re a couple years into this relationship, I’m starting to see the benefits of it. Cost is just one of them. But the other thing I’m really excited about is all the integration that they’re doing. So I’m super excited about moving to some additional Kaseya services.”
