Kaseya Connect isn’t just one week and one location a year—it’s showing up in your backyard. Through Connect Locals, Kaseya is meeting partners where they’re at by hosting a global tour of hands-on, half day events full of industry insights, product expertise, and peer networking. MSP Success was on the ground at Kaseya Connect Local in Dallas this week, where attendees heard from Kaseya, Datto, and INKY experts on the current state of the industry, the biggest risks to watch out for, and the best ways to optimize their operations.
Here’s what you missed—and a taste of what you can expect from Kaseya Connect Las Vegas later this month.
Building Cyber Resilience into Your MSP with a Unified Stack
Tool sprawl is drastically slowing your MSP’s operations, according to Taher Adamali, Director of BCDR Concierge at Kaseya (pictured above). When technicians have to manually move data between disconnected systems, those wasted minutes add up—which impacts your billable hours.
This is a key difference separating top performing MSPs from the rest. “When backup is unified and standardized, it stops being a collection of tools and starts becoming a part of the business continuity strategy. Instead of selling backup licenses, you’re delivering uptime,” Adamali said. “It’s a fundamental shift in how your consumers view [your services].”
Streamlining your operations with tools that work together will have three major outcomes, said Adamali. “Your operational overhead is going to drop because you’re managing significantly fewer tools. [You’ll be managing] fewer dashboards, [with] standardized templates and workflows. You’re also going to deliver faster services to your customers because everything is streamlined.”
The difference is structural, not just operational. “Unified strategy does not mean unified technology. Fragmented MSPs’ cost to deliver backup increases with every new customer, because they have complexity to the bottom line. Unified MSPs’ cost per client decreases as they scale because they’re using a repeatable process. That’s the leverage point,” Amadali said. “It’s not about selling more tools, but about delivering one well-designed service, profitably, at scale.”
The Legal Breakdown
Brad Gross, President of the Law Office of Bradley Gross, walked attendees through the most essential legal foundations every MSP needs to have in place. Here’s how to make sure you’re covered.
The Customer Agreement. “Your customer agreement is your first line of defense,” said Gross. “It is a constitution that does not change.” Gross stressed that your MSP should have one customer agreement, which is non-customer specific. “I want you to think about your MSA as the rules you [see] when you walk into a restaurant. Who are they talking to? Whoever’s reading the sign. That’s the rule; that’s an MSA.”
Your customer agreement should cover two areas: legal and reality. “Legal is easy,” Gross said. “Legal is there to protect you in case you mess something up. While that is important, the truth is you don’t mess up very often, do you? Reality is where you’re dealing with a customer.” This includes things like MFA, co-managed services, transition services, regulatory compliance, etc. Finally, Gross reminded attendees to make sure that their MSA is enforceable, implemented correctly, and clearly communicated to clients.
The Employment Agreement. This is different than an employee handbook, though Gross recommends you have both. The employment agreement “tells the employee what they’re entitled to—[like] compensation and benefits—and what you expect from them. [This way], there are no mismanaged expectations at the employee level,” Gross said.
While not mandatory, it can protect your business from disputes over perceived entitlements like bonuses or additional benefits.
Another thing to include in your employment agreement is a non-compete or non-solicitation agreement. Non-competes limit your employees based on time span and geography; non-solicits say your employees can’t steal your customers or other staff. Gross advocates for a non-solicit as courts are far more likely to uphold them than non-competes—but only if they’re reasonable. For example, “don’t steal my customers” is not enforceable, but “don’t steal customers you had contact with” is.
New Offerings from Kaseya
Kaseya also introduced several updates aimed at simplifying operations and improving the partner experience.
Commercial Flexibility. At last year’s Connect, Kaseya announced they would be ending high watermark pricing. That transition is now underway. High watermark pricing has officially been eliminated for Autotask Endpoint Protection and Datto RMM, with plans to extend this change across their full product portfolio in the coming months.
Commercial Experience. Kaseya is also simplifying invoices. Similar line items, such as SKUs that have the same start date and price, will be condensed into a single line item to make invoices easier to read and manage.
Additionally, integrated customer billing has been launched within Autotask. “This allows consumption of certain custom products to be able to determine the invoice quantities that you are then charging to your customers,” said Travis Brittain, Director of Field Marketing at Kaseya. “So, as they add or remove devices or users that you’re billing, you can have those be automatically updated on the invoices you’re sending to your customers.”
Technology. Datto SIRIS 6 is here, and it’s “faster, smarter, and built for your success,” said Brittain. SIRIS 6 offers double the data storage capacity, with rackmounts up to 120 terabytes (TB). And, due to partner demand, the desktop models are back with 12 configurations ranging from 2-24 TB of storage.
Kaseya also introduced Datto Backup for Entra ID. In an effort not to repeat Microsoft 365’s mistake of only retaining up to 90 days of data in Entra ID, Datto will offer full identity restores to address the major gap in identity protection. “Even if the entire tenant is lost, we can restore into a new tenant,” Brittain said.
Stay tuned for more coverage from Kaseya Connect Global next month. In the meantime, check out this refresher on what went down at last year’s Connect.
