At IT Nation Connect, ConnectWise announced that its PSA is now in preview on the Asio Platform. With the addition of ConnectWise PSA, the Asio Platform, which has been underway for several years, now includes ConnectWise RMM, ConnectWise Security360, and ConnectWise Backup360.
“We’re delivering that singular platform,” with an open ecosystem, stressed Ameer Karim, EVP and GM, Cybersecurity and Data Protection. “Everything’s on it, so it makes deployment easier for them. So once that partner’s embraced the Asio platform, with a click of a button they can start enabling this. They can start with RMM, then they can go to PSA, or they can start with PSA, and then when they want security they can do that. They want backup, they can do that. They want RPA automation, they can do that. They want AI, they can do that.” The MSP, he says, “didn’t have to install anything, didn’t have additional onboarding. [They] just turned it on.”
“I think that ConnectWise with Kaseya are very much in lockstep [strategy wise],” says Lawrence Cruciana, president of Corporate Information Technologies, an MSP in Charlotte, North Carolina, “but that there is this overarching strategy and common back office and common API led-language on the back end of the Asio platform. There are then services that can be bolted into that based on the needs of individual MSPs. This very big comprehensive platform that can be many things allows for MSPs to have a guarantee of integration of homogenized reporting information coming in and out of that backend. But they can customize what services, what modules they can bolt into it for the individual needs of their business.”
“I like the vision,” says Mark Calzone, vice president of operations at Sourcepass, a national MSP headquartered in Melville, New York. “They just need to execute on it now. So let’s leave that one there. ConnectWise, historically, sometimes they’ll announce things and then not execute and deliver on it. They know that. So I think they plan on really hitting that goal this year and executing and delivering what they said they were going to do in a little bit of a quicker manner. I think Manny’s [new CEO Manny Rivelo] is going to push them to move really fast on things and efficiently. And I think it’ll get them to that next level.”
ConnectWise Chief Product Officer Jeff Bishop readily admits that the Asio RMM had some issues early on. “The product had a lot of gaps at the beginning of the year. … We weren’t happy with the level of resiliency that we were seeing there. It seemed a little fragile. Little things were causing it to kind of fall over sometimes. So we spent the last nine months really building out.”
Calzone says Sourcepass has moved to the Asio RMM. “We were in the search to replace [ConnectWise] Automate [the legacy RMM]. It was an aging system. So I think there was a lot more flexibility in moving over to [the Asio] RMM and being on the Asio platform, especially the integrations.
That move was not without bumps, however. “It was probably not fully ready when they first released it, but I think the great thing about ConnectWise is they’ve listened to us,” Calzone says.
ConnectWise does offer a migration tool for on-prem and cloud Automate RMM users that automates a good deal of the process, Bishop says, with some manual migration work required. MSPs that migrate to Asio RMM can expect about a 10-15% price increase, Bishop says.
For partners that aren’t ready to migrate, ConnectWise has what he calls a “bridge” option that allows MSPs to access some Asio capabilities through APIs. “We’re not charging for that because you’re still using Automate. We’re just giving you access to the new experience and hopefully showing them the value of Asio so that they start to make that migration over.”
ConnectWise Promises A Smoother Move to Asio PSA
While the Asio RMM was essentially built new from the ground up and thus requires migration, Bishop says the Asio PSA has the same backend with a rebuilt UI, so no migration will be required. “With the PSA, because it’s like an ERP, there’s so much workflow and it is how our MSPs run their entire business. We didn’t want to force any sort of a migration,” he explains.
As ConnectWise adds PSA screens in Asio, current users will be able to go from the old to the new seamlessly, he says. Our partners can log into the current world or they can log into the new world and the data’s in both. They can see it and they can access it and they don’t have to migrate or do any additional work. It’ll just work. Now maybe that sounds a little too simplistic to be true, but that’s why it’s taken us so long.”
There is no additional charge either, he says. “We’re not trying to make this hard. We really want to make that very simple for them. This is the tool where they run their business and if we made that hard, it’s not in our best interest or theirs. We want them as partners. We want them to be here with us for years and years to come.”
Ed Correia, president and CEO of Sagacent Technologies, an MSP in San Jose, California, says his company is already using Asio RMM and recently migrated from the on-prem version of ConnectWise Manage PSA to the hosted version in the ConnectWise cloud. “We could easily go to the Asio [PSA] today, but certain key parts of it are not there yet. And those parts, they anticipate being there by April of next year. So I already texted my guys and said, ‘Hey, we’re moving to Asio in May.’”
Sourcepass also to move to Asio PSA in the next year or so, Calzone says. “So hence, eventually we’ll move into Asio with PSA and then with the sell product and then security products.” He says he likes “the flexibility as a platform and having a single pane of class, having one dashboard for everybody to log into and go to and see everything and everything tying together with all those applications.”
Moving Forward With Security Offerings For MSPs
Overall, Cruciana says he was happy to hear ConnectWise’s commitment to continue advancing the non-Asio versions of products, plus the tone the company set that “we’re a growing entity, we’re investing in these key areas and having a certainty about that. … The fact that we continue to see wise acquisitions [most recently Axcient and SkyKick]. The acquisitions that they’re making are legitimately where there were holes in their portfolio. They’re making the right acquisitions. The companies that they’re bringing in, they’re not making some mistakes that their competitors have done of gutting R&D or gutting the executive leadership.”
At IT Nation Connect, former Axcient CEO Rod Mathews was introduced as the new head of the data protection suite of offerings.
When asked about the SkyKick leadership and their absence at the event, Rivelo in his press conference said, “I wouldn’t look too deep into that. Obviously, we will continue to make management decisions and when you do some of those things, there’s sometimes duplication, but we’re working with them and they’re helping us integrate the product into the technology stack. The next thing we’ll see on Backup360 is SkyKick.”
Asked if ConnectWise plans other acquisitions in the security area, Karim says, “I’m always looking at new ways to expand the portfolio … You’ll see there’s a common pattern here. Cloud security, as more and more stuff comes to cloud, we want to further deepen on the cloud. Now some of that is with SkyKick, but we want to expand further on that. Network security is important. That’s another component. Email security is another component. … Data loss prevention. So there’s a bunch of things that I think MSPs are going to start running into, it and we want to be that one-stop shop for them.”
MSPs Expect New Leadership To Move Fast
Correia says he will deeply miss former CEO Jason Magee, but expects new CEO Manny Rivelo to move the company forward quickly. “It’s very clear in the way things are being presented here at this conference that they want it clear that Asio is ready, and people should be moving there, and they want to get people on the new platform. I mean, it’s been a long time coming.”
Rivelo said he plans to move fast, but not necessarily to get the company ready for sale—a move that has been speculated about for several years now. “Speed’s crucial. But it’s not to sell the company. It’s to create value,” Rivelo said. … “I’ll be the first to say, yes, our sponsors {PE firm Thoma Bravo] at some point will want to see a return, which they’ve seen already. This company’s worth a lot more than was worth many years ago. They’ll want to see a return. But that outcome could be one of many. It could be a sale, it could be to a strategic, it could be a sale to another sponsor, it could be an IPO. There’s lots of different ways. It could be dividend distributions. And so the key is to build something that’s broadly successful and let the outcome come. And that’s the way I view it.”
Image courtesy of ConnectWise
