While elite cyclists are heading toward the finish line of the Tour de France in Nice, France, on July 21, and countless other athletes are getting ready for the Paris Olympics on July 26, work in the channel continues apace. MSP Success wants to make sure you don’t miss anything, such M&A activity among MSPs. Check out recent acquisitions by Lyra Technology Group and CloudScale 365. Plus, find out what Kaseya’s Future Of IT Survey uncovered about AI and automation trends, what vendor just signed the CISA Secure By Design Pledge, and other channel news.
MSP Acquisitions
Evergreen’s Lyra Technology Group Adds DKBinnovative To Its Portfolio
Lyra Technology Group, a family of managed IT services providers backed by Evergreen, announced its acquisition of DKBinnovative (DKB), an MSP serving Texas and beyond. Keith Barthold, DKB’s founder and current CEO, will elevate to chairman of DKB and is announcing Chris Scott as CEO. Prior to joining DKB, Scott successfully founded and exited Netera Networks, an IT solutions integrator. Scott also served as CEO of another Dallas-Fort Worth area MSP and held other key leadership roles in the industry.
With the Evergreen/Lyra acquisition model, rather than rolling up companies into one platform, “each business is operated independently by their own management team that retains its own culture, brand, employees, and technology stack,” Jack Fumagalli, director of M&A at Lyra Technology Group, tells MSP Success. “We really just look to take a company that’s doing something exceptional already and preserve that and hopefully elevate that business with access to the resources and peer set of the over 60 businesses that are a part of the Lyra family.”
Fumagalli says Evergreen/Lyra looks for MSPs business that are doing one or more things exceptionally well and are typically making $2 million or above in annual revenue. “One thing that was really impressive to us about DKB was what they call “the DKB difference,” a very customer-centric, process-driven approach for their service delivery function. That was what really differentiated it in the market.”
He adds, “The other aspect that really impressed us was the culture that Keith and his leadership team had built at DKB. You could really tell it was an employee-centric organization where people really love to work there, which aligns very well with Evergreen and Lyra. Our ethos is a people-first business and we all collectively believe that people are the foundation of any great service organization. So that cultural alignment with DKB has made it a really strong partnership from the onset.”
Fumagalli says Lyra has made a few more acquisitions since DKB, but they have not been announced yet.
CloudScale365 Acquires Zthernet
CloudScale365, an MSP with eight regional offices, announced the completion of its acquisition of Zthernet, a regional MSP servicing the Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, Texas, markets. Zthernet CEO Greg Hough will be assuming an executive role with CloudScale365. This latest acquisition, the company’s sixth since 2021, is part of CloudScale365’s expansion strategy, focusing on customer concentration in key regional markets. In addition to mergers on the East and West coasts, CloudScale365 acquired its Tulsa, Oklahoma, location in 2022.
By The Numbers
4 Key Insights from Kaseya’s Future Of IT Survey
Kaseya’s new 2024 Future of IT Survey Report finds that a top priority of IT service providers is increasing productivity though automation and AI. Meanwhile, cybersecurity will continue to be a primary investment area, according to respondents. Here are the top findings:
- AI Investment: AI takes center stage
Forty percent of survey respondents expect AI usage to be the primary budget driver in 2024, and 37% are considering investing in AI and machine learning, up from 20% last year prior. Three out of four respondents see AI as beneficial for their business, with 41% using AI technologies to enhance IT efficiency and 40% using AI to boost end-user productivity. - Cybersecurity remains a priority
Cybersecurity is a top challenge for 43% of respondents. Moreover, 45% of IT service providers consider cybersecurity the top area to add or change solutions in the next budget cycle, and half of the respondents prioritize increasing their budget for IT security over other areas. This includes investments in security awareness training (45%), email security (43%), penetration testing (36%), and vulnerability scanning (35%). - Focus on automation and completeness
Forty-two percent of respondents advocate prioritizing the efficiency of IT processes, a trend that has been steadily increasing over the past three years. Almost half of the respondents (42%) indicate a strong preference for all-in-one solutions that can manage multiple tasks and processes, and 21% say they prioritize access to comprehensive IT documentation. - Economic concerns and shorter vendor contracts
Most respondents expect that ongoing economic uncertainty will primarily affect spending on software (39%), hardware (36%), and headcount (26%). Furthermore, 40% of respondents have displayed a growing inclination toward shorter contract periods with vendors.
Cybersecurity
N-able Signs the CISA Secure by Design Pledge
N-able, an RMM, data protection as-a-service, and security software company, has signed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Secure By Design Pledge. The Pledge is a voluntary initiative to promote integrating robust cybersecurity practices into product development and service offerings and to make a good-faith effort to work towards increased security and transparency within the next year.
“Signing the Secure by Design pledge reaffirms our commitment to fundamentally integrating security into every stage of our development lifecycle. This approach is not simply about compliance; it’s about leadership in creating technology that can withstand emerging threats,” said Dave MacKinnon, chief security officer at N-able, in a press statement. “We are dedicated to transparency, continuous improvement, and collaboration with industry partners and stakeholders. This pledge underscores our determination to build trust and constantly advance security in every piece of technology we deliver.”
Among the top four RMM market leaders, which Canalys identifies as ConnectWise, Kaseya, N-able, and NinjaOne, N-able is the only one that has taken the pledge to date.
Integrations And Partnerships
Guardz Integrates with ConnectWise PSA Through Invent Program
Cybersecurity startup Guardz now directly integrates with ConnectWise PSA APIs. It earned integration certification through Invent, an integration collaboration program for third-party software providers (TSPs). The integration will enable MSPs to seamlessly integrate Guardz incident data into their clients’ ConnectWise PSA environment, allowing for detection, prioritization, and response to incidents from their service board.
“With everything required to protect a business in one package, this integration allows more MSPs to significantly increase their range of capabilities while cutting their costs and growing their businesses,” said Dor Eisner, CEO and co-founder of Guardz, in a press statement. “Integrating the power of our MSP platform with ConnectWise PSA allows us to provide a powerful combination of threat intelligence, remediation and automation.”
Cisco Duo Partners With Badge For Phishing-Resistant Identification
Privacy company Badge announced a partnership with Cisco Duo for a hardware-independent multifactor authentication (MFA solution. Badge enables Cisco Duo to unlock new identity and authentication use cases while reducing friction and enabling seamless, passwordless enrollment using verifiable credentials (VCs). Badge leverages the initial identity verification (IDV) enrollment, and from there the user can authenticate to access this credential anywhere, anytime, on any device. There is no need for repeat IDVs throughout the user lifetime journey.
People
Security vendor Forcepoint promoted Ryan Windham, chief customer and strategy officer, to CEO, succeeding Manny Rivelo, who is retiring from his position as CEO, effective immediately. Rivelo will continue to serve in an advisory capacity through August 1, 2024. Prior to joining Forcepoint in 2023, Windham was CEO at AppViewX. He also served as CEO at Cedexis, acquired by Citrix in 2018. Earlier in his career, Windham held senior management positions at security and infrastructure companies including Imperva, F5 Networks, and Websense.
Black Hat, producer of the Black Hat USA security event, announced keynote speakers for the conference. They are: Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA); Hans de Vries, chief cybersecurity and operations officer (COO) at the European Union (EU) Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA); Felicity Oswald, CEO at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC); and Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal, as Keynote speakers for Black Hat USA 2024. The Keynote speakers will present on Wednesday, August 7 and Thursday, August 8, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.
