DattoCon 2022: Kaseya CEO Talks Up Opportunities, MSPs Give Mixed Reaction
One MSP was expecting less business talk and more excitement.
![Rob Rae DattoCon 2022 Rob Rae DattoCon 2022](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt003a3789742af377/652418b58fd57c884f69d06b/Rob-Rae-DattoCon-2022.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Cooper, Kaseya‘s artificial intelligence (AI) engine, is now “sniffing” all Datto applications and functions, CEO Fred Voccola said.
“He’s sniffing around, making sure people are using technology … the right way,” he said. “If [they’re] not activating … he’s there to give you assistance. He optimizes integrations and also lets you know that if new version of tech comes out, are you trained on it and ready. We want to make sure they’re getting the most out of it. You can turn him off if you want, but he’s there. We rolled out Cooper in IT Complete four months ago and 80% of insights Cooper provided were acted on by MSPs. And Cooper’s free in every module we have.”
Jason Manar is Kaseya’s CISO. He joined Kaseya last October and formerly was an FBI special agent overseeing all cyber, counterintelligence, intelligence and language service programs for its San Diego office.
He said there’s a security message for MSPs at DattoCon.
“The message that I would have is everything that they could do proactively, I want them to do that,” he said. “And what I mean about that is having a sense of knowing it’s not a matter of if, but when something happens. And the worst thing that you can do is be reactionary when something happens. That means think about having an incident response plan, a business continuity plan. Think about having an action plan and even preparing for that. Yesterday was Sunday and I think about football. You wouldn’t imagine a team going out onto an NFL field and then not have practiced the week before or not having had a [preseason]. Well, it’s the same thing for those businesses. They have to practice whatever a potential incident response would be. The other message that I would say is proactively engage in those that are going to help you. So if you’re going to have those training tabletop exercises, reach out to local law enforcement, already have a contract in place with someone that’s going to be able to do remediation and have what those steps are that you’re going to take to prepare as much as you can. And then that way, in the event something happens, you’re ready to go. And then the other thing, I would say, is just always be constantly willing to learn and innovate.”
Nerdio is on hand at DattoCon to help MSPs build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure.
Joseph Landes is Nerdio‘s chief revenue officer.
“DattoCon is certainly a great event for us because there are so many MSPs who come who are looking to make the shift from the on-premises world into the cloud,” he said. “So we’re here talking to MSPs who are looking to build cloud practices in Azure and we certainly welcome the opportunity to come to an event for this. We help MSPs understand how to make it easier on themselves to move to the cloud with Azure.”
In terms of Kaseya acquiring Datto, Landes said it works with a lot of MSPs that have worked with Datto and Kaseya, “and anything that benefits MSPs is something we’re excited about.”
We also polled a number of MSPs to get their thoughts on Voccola’s keynote. Steve Lenti, EnvisionIT Solutions‘ director of operations, said it all sounded well and good, “but my only issue with it is I’ve been coming to these for years and he deflated Datto.”
“Normally it’s an exciting time at the beginning of the keynote, and [former Datto CEO Austin McChord] used to jump on stage and we had Snoop Dogg up there at one point,” he said. “It really was just way too much business for something that was going to be super fun and super great to be at. So to me, it was more of a justification [for acquisition] than anything else.”
Joe Svoboda, CEO of The Miller Group, said he was surprised that Voccola’s keynote provided so much information about what’s going to happen.
“I wasn’t expecting that so it’s giving me some hope that this little merger is going to go well,” he said. “It seems like they have an aggressive road map ahead for most of the products, which is reassuring. So I was pleasantly surprised. We actually got a lot of our questions answered in the last month by some of the executives over at Kaseya. They went out of their way to try to make us feel better. I still had some concerns and still do. It’s more ‘show me’ instead of ‘just tell me.’ But I think he did a good job. I feel optimistic, a lot more than I was a month or two ago.”
Jim Carlucci, ImagEze‘s technical account manager for all of its client base, said it was “refreshing to hear a good outtake.”
“It was really nice to hear how they’re handling the acquisition and a lot of the product enhancements that are down the pipe,” he said. “It was nice to hear about the integrations that are coming. Those were really my biggest questions because I’m on the sales side. I’m here with a few of our engineering staff members, so I’m sure they had some different questions. But mine were all about how we can leverage what happened. We’re poised to benefit bigtime. We [worked with] Kaseya and Datto independently, so the fact that they came together was actually a piece of welcome news for me and us. They were just two different players in a much larger game and now they’re a much bigger player in the same game.”
Michael Boteler, Certified CIO‘s network operations center (NOC) manager, said his biggest question is how the acquisition affects his MSP’s existing business.
“We use Datto and Unitrends, so what’s the future of that?” he said. “So I’m here to scope that out as well and see if I can find any answers. So far unknown, but I am feeling optimistic. And I’ve been doing the breakout sessions and they’ve been really helpful as well.”
Michael Boteler, Certified CIO‘s network operations center (NOC) manager, said his biggest question is how the acquisition affects his MSP’s existing business.
“We use Datto and Unitrends, so what’s the future of that?” he said. “So I’m here to scope that out as well and see if I can find any answers. So far unknown, but I am feeling optimistic. And I’ve been doing the breakout sessions and they’ve been really helpful as well.”
DATTOCON 2022 — A big message during Monday’s start of DattoCon 2022 was helping MSPs make the most of the massive market opportunity with SMBs by reducing their pain points.
Kaseya is going to make Datto more affordable and help MSPs and address challenges like “vendor fatigue.” That’s according to Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s CEO. He addressed MSPs during the start of this week’s DattoCon 2022 in Washington, D.C. More than 2,700 attendees are at the conference.
Kaseya’s Fred Voccola
Kaseya closed its $6.2 billion acquisition of Datto earlier this summer.
Voccola said Datto‘s Autotask is the best professional services platform (PSA), and its remote monitoring and management (RMM) “rocks.”
He also said MSPs will see an average 15% reduction in the cost of Datto solutions.
“Is Kaseya going to force a change in commercial terms?” Voccola said. “Absolutely not, we’re not changing any terms of existing licensing deals. We will continue the existing business models and offer enhanced savings for longer-term commitments.”
MSPs are suffering from vendor fatigue in that the average MSP is working with 17 vendors, he said. That’s “too much overhead and a pain in the butt.”
Kaseya and Datto coming together can potentially reduce that from 17 to one, “greatly reducing complexity in managing vendors,” Voccola said.
“We address this with workflow integrations,” he said. “Because we own the platform and control the road map, we’re able to deliver hundreds of deep integrations, adding about 25 per month, on top of lightweight integrations we have.”
See our slideshow above for more from DattoCon 2022.
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