Kaseya Connect 2012 User Conference: 7 Questions I'll Ask

Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie

1. State of the Business: What is Kaseya seeing overall from its MSP partner base, both in North America and abroad (EMEA, Australia/New Zealand, Africa, etc.)? Also, how are acquisitions (such as last year’s Intellipool deal) playing out, and are more acquisitions planned?

2. Cloud vs. On-premises: What is the current adoption rate/ratio of Kaseya’s cloud-based tools vs. on-premises tools?

3. Lessons From K2: It has been a couple of years since the bumpy, challenging K2 launch. Initially, some MSPs suffered from under-powered servers and challenging upgrades. Also, some module extensions from K2 were slow to arrive. How has the overall effort evolved in the past year, and what lessons did Kaseya learn from some of the early K2 deployments?

4. Mobile Device Management: Kaseya in 2011 was one of the first MSP-focused software companies to introduce a mobile device management (MDM) module, helping MSPs to remotely manage Google Android and Apple iOS tablets and smart phones. What are the adoption trends and pricing models so far among MSPs?

5. Third-party Integrations: Kaseya has evangelized K2 as an open, extendible software platform that ISVs and other partners can plug into. What have been the integration milestones over the past year?

6. The Old PSA Question, Updated: Kaseya a couple of years ago mentioned plans to offer PSA (professional services automation) capabilities in its software. And at the 2011 conference, Kaseya described its service desk integration strategy with third-party PSA offerings (Autotask, ConnectWise and Tigerpaw Software). In some sectors the PSA and RMM software markets have converged (examples: ConnectWise-LabTech Software and PacketTrap MSP-PacketTrap PSA). So how is Kaseya feeling about its own PSA-oriented efforts?

7. Funding Strategy: Will Kaseya remain privately held and self-funded, or will the company seek private equity, venture capital or perhaps even IPO (initial public offering) down the road? I ask Blackie this question every year. And every year he gives the same, consistent answer — typically stating that Kaseya is profitable, debt-free and has no plans to raise money from external sources. Is this the year Blackie’s answer changes? I doubt it… but I’ll still ask the funding question. And plenty of additional questions.

What’s on your mind for Kaseya Connect 2012? Let me know and I’ll see if I can work your questions into my interviews with Kaseya’s executive team and partners.