Kaseya CEO Rania Succar and her leadership team want MSPs to know they “get” them. That was the underlying message running throughout DattoCon 2025 this week. Executives laid out the roadmap for investing in data, insight, and tools to move MSPs forward into the future as emerging tech rapidly transforms customer needs and expectations. At the same time, Succar made it clear Kaseya plans to be the partner they can rely on—with a focus on community-powered growth—as the MSP business model faces a major transformation.
During her opening keynote, Succar noted the stressors MSPs face in running their businesses and what MSPs have been telling her about their pain points.
“Margins are under pressure,” she said. “In many cases, we see that core gross margins have come down from 50% to 30%. AI-native MSPs have started to enter the market and undercut prices. Your customers are putting pressure on you to bring prices down. You’re all trying to automate your tier one high-volume tasks, but it’s harder than you thought. Revenue is also growing more slowly than in the past, especially this year. You’re looking for a partner that helps you get more leads and convert those leads; a partner that helps you onboard new customers and do your discovery faster.”
She emphasized that demand for cybersecurity and compliance services is rising, and said she knows MSPs are also under pressure to demonstrate value to customers.
Then there’s the AI imperative. “Everyone is looking to add data services, business intelligence, and AI capabilities to their service line, but this is a new and complicated space, and so you need a partner at your side to enable all of that.
To meet both the moment and the future, Succar outlined the values that will guide Kaseya going forward.
4 Guiding Values
First is customer outcomes, she said. “Above all, our team gets out of bed every day to increase your revenue, to expand your margins, and to ensure your customers are successful. Those are our North Stars.”
Second is innovation that delivers. “Our intention is to be one of the most consequential innovators in the small and midmarket ecosystem with all of you. We’ll define a roadmap that automates what’s manual, connects what’s fragmented, and secure what’s vulnerable. We’ll expand productivity, and drive profitability and customer trust.”
The third guiding value is a frictionless partner experience. “It’s incredibly important to us that every interaction you have with Kaseya is frictionless and delightful. We’ve been working hard at this and we’re starting to hear from you that it’s working.”
And fourth, Kaseya is leaning into community-powered growth. “MSPs are stronger together,” she said. “No one is better positioned to bring this community together than we are.”
MSPs Weigh in on Kaseya’s Vision and Product Announcements
We asked MSPs what they thought of Kaseya’s roadmap map, partner vibe, and announcements from DattoCon 2025. Here’s what they had to say.
Partner Experience
“I honestly got the feeling … that she [Succar] is genuinely concerned about moving partners forward. It’s not just about Kaseya,” said Schyler Jones, CEO of Mirador IT, an MSP in Concord, New Hampshire.
Succar’s message resonated with Will Slappey, too. The CEO of IT Voice, an MSP headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, with multiple locations across the country, noted, “Everything she said at the beginning, just in terms of the compression of margin and organic growth, her recognizing that. That’s a sentiment that I’ve heard from almost every MSP, that the last 12 months have been significantly harder, from adding new customers and maintaining margin, than it was in times past. … It’s great that she spent the time getting to know the partners and knowing the pressures they’re under.”
Antwine Jackson, president and founder of Enitech, an MSP in Raleigh, North Carolina, is pleased Kaseya is addressing some of the issues that caused partner friction in the past. “I think that what she’s trying to do is fix the things that are broken internally and then working on driving innovation, but you can’t drive innovation without at least acknowledging the challenges from within. I think it’s going to be a big culture shift that is really going to benefit and change the way that people view Kaseya.”
For Eric Shorr, president and CEO of Secure Future Tech Solutions, an MSP in Warwick, Rhode Island, it was important that he didn’t feel like he was “being sold to.” Rather, he said, Succar conveyed that “they’re going to be there for us and help us grow.”
The INKY Acquisition
The announcement that Kaseya acquired email security provider INKY both surprised and pleased MSPs.
“I think that is going to definitely make Kaseya 365 User a much more appealing offer,” Jackson said. “One of the things that has held us back from [adopting User] has been the lack of features in some of the email security components. So INKY is a huge value add.”
“I’m super excited about INKY,” Slappey said. “I think that a lot of people have been giving feedback about Graphus [Kaseya’s email security product] for a while as being insufficient. We didn’t even consider Kaseya 365 User because we didn’t like Graphus as a part of it. So, I think that was huge.”
While Jones has already adopted Kaseya 365 User, he did so knowing the shortcomings of Graphus, so he too is excited about INKY.
Expanding the Backup Portfolio
Kaseya made two backup announcements at DattoCon, a new version of the SIRIS appliance and a brand-new offering, Datto Backup for Microsoft Entra ID. We asked MSPs about Entra ID backup.
“Datto Backup for Microsoft Entra ID, that’s an awesome add-on,” Slappey says. “The fact that they’re putting that in for free for Kaseya 365 User is a huge plus.”
Jackson says the solution fills one of the gaps in Kaseya’s stack and calls it “low-hanging fruit.” He explains, “It’s making the SaaS solutions and the SaaS backup products that much more attractive. Our market is so commoditized. What Kaseya is really trying to do is figure out ways to not compete [just] on price but compete on feature set and value. And I think that’s one of the things that some would argue has been lacking. Yes, they can win on pricing, but there are so many gaps that they still need to close. Adding that feature closes another gap that they needed to be competitive.”
For Jones, Entra ID backup will open another conversation with customers. “The world knows identity protection thanks to all the consumer advertising. So, at the end of the day, this gives us another feather in our cap when it comes to marketing and talking to clients about identity protection.”
Pricing, Billing and Invoicing
Some announcements Kaseya made around pricing, billing, and invoicing are steps toward that frictionless and delightful partner experience Succar is striving for. To much applause, Chief Product Officer Jim Lippie revealed a new unified billing and invoicing solution for partners and a sped-up timeline for ending high-water mark pricing for Datto RMM, SaaS Protection, and Autotask in December.
Shorr says he was pleased with the end of high-water mark pricing. “I have always resented that—and Kaseya is not the only company that was doing that. Getting rid of the high- water mark billing as of December 1st, that’s incredibly positive.”
Simplified billing and invoicing is a positive for Slappey. “It’s probably Kaseya’s number one frustration from its customer base by and large. Them taking that seriously and solving it, I think will make a lot of people happy.”
He adds that he was surprised billing and invoicing was called out in the keynote session, “but I do think part of the reason they included it, and part of the reason why it’s important, is that from a trust perspective, Kaseya is listening to the partner community and actually acting and delivering on that.”
Preview of the Digital Workforce
Looking ahead, Kaseya previewed its upcoming AI-powered Digital Workforce, which leverages agentic AI.
Jackson says he’s happy Kaseya is continuing its embrace of AI and moving toward agentic AI. “I think that’s going to be game changing in so many ways,” he says. “If we can find some automation and some ways where we can gain back time, I think it’s going to make the average MSP so much more impactful. It’s really going to benefit the sub-$1 million MSPs because now they can do more with less.”
Slappey liked the proof of concept but will wait for the proof. “If it does half of what they say it will do, and it does it well, I think it’ll be a game changer. If it doesn’t, then it’s probably just going to [annoy] a bunch of people. That’s one of the challenges with a lot of AI products right now in the market is just that they all look great. Will this product be the one that does it well enough?”
The API Path to Innovation and Ecosystems
Another shift Kaseya is making for the future is becoming an API-first company. Succar said Kaseya will be building secure and modern APIs for all their offerings. It’s a key part of their innovation agenda.
“If you don’t have APIs, you can’t really take advantage of AI,” Jones noted. “I think that’s going to be a key underpinning for them to be able to put forth that Digital Workforce strategy.”
Shorr says a move toward APIs gives MSPs choices. “In the past, even though they had APIs, they didn’t necessarily want to work together with other competing vendors … having an open environment I think is good.”
Jackson calls the new focus on APIs “remarkable.” He adds, “Being more open-minded to some of these other vendors and partners and really trying to focus on driving those relationships and making those relationships stronger, I think that’s really going to turn the tide forward to Kaseya.”
Succar has no doubt: “No one is better positioned than we are to partner with you in this moment of transformation.”
