Kaseya Intros AI Bots, Credit for Unused Appliances, Passive Recurring Revenue

KASEYA DATTOCON 2023 — Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola – driving home the company’s themes of greater product integration and utilization, affordability, and ending vendor fatigue – introduced new features to Kaseya’s Cooper AI Engine, a flexible backup spend program, and a secure payment service to help SMBs, which MSPs have asked for, and hundreds of others that are less noticeable but still important.

Voccola, speaking at the Kaseya DattoCon event in Miami on Tuesday, says the company also spent “tens of millions” [of dollars] to relaunch the Datto Networking line of products, which now are readily available, he said. Kaseya lowered its product prices by an average of 15%.

The company has also retained most of Datto’s channel management team and unified the Datto and Kaseya platforms for a more seamless experience for both sets of partners, he said, adding Kaseya adopted Datto’s partner program. Meanwhile, Kaseya hired “hundreds” of additional account managers. Voccola also apologized to MSPs for the Kaseya/Datto billing issues that frustrated and angered many MSPs. The issues affected about 8% of Kaseya customers shortly following the acquisition and now affects less 2%, he said. Voccola promised a new “super kickass” billing experience by the end of the year.

Automatic Integration of Microsoft 365 Tenants on Datto RMM

Kaseya’s Fred Voccola

To help MSPs combat vendor fatigue, Kaseya will continue to add modules to its product suites and platforms, such as the IT Complete management platform, which now includes 40 modules and expanded endpoint management. Kaseya, for example, added 60 new features to Datto RMM, including automatic integration of Microsoft 365 tenants. The additions are designed to give MSPs less reasons to add more vendors to their line cards. “It makes it super easy to leverage and manage,” Voccola said.

Another new addition to the security suite is Secure Payments, a technology Kaseya got two years ago through its acquisition of ConnectBooster. The service ensures SMB customers’ online payments are PCI compliant. Almost 75% of those payments are not today, although 80% of SMB customers believe their MSPs have already addressed those issues, Voccola said.  MSPs can join the program for about $5,000 annually. After signing up a customer for the service, MSPs then receive a percentage of the revenue ConnectBooster charges the SMB. Think of it as passive, recurring revenue. The service is designed to save SMBs non-compliance fees usually charged by credit card companies and make them more secure.

Voccola also introduced FLEXspend as part of Kesaya’s newly launched unified backup portal, which provides full endpoint backup for on-prem and cloud solutions. Under FLEXspend, MSPs receive credits for Datto-branded backup devices that are no longer used as clients move more of their applications to the cloud. MSPs can apply that credit to cloud licenses, such as Azure or AWS.

“Things are changing very rapidly,” Voccola said. “We want to provide you the ability to move your investment among our backup portfolio as your customers are moving and as your demands change.”

Cooper Has Some AI Kids

Kaseya stuck its toe in the AI water about 18 months ago when it introduced the Cooper AI Engine to the KasayaOne platform. Named after Voccola’s dog, Cooper gives MSPs insights and recommendations on different features and solutions customers could benefit from. About 47% of MSPs followed up on those recommendations, Voccolla said. Kaseya is following that with Cooper Bots, a free AI process automation tool that can handle hundreds of repetitive tasks that technicians typically have to handle manually, such as provisioning end users.

By the end of the year, the bots will be able to handle the automation of password rotation, onboarding and offboarding end users, blacklist/whitelist end points, internet connectivity analysis, add/remove end user contacts, and assign/unassign M365 licensing. Early next year, expect the bots to handle blacklist/automated network configuration, assign/unassign users to active directory groups, and add/remove users to client portals.

“We’ve been very surprised by the speed of the bots and the speed of what the stuff can do,” Voccola said. “This is really exciting stuff. There’s no programing, no coding. You don’t have to hire an engineering group to work with it.”