Kaseya Consolidates Offices, Preps Enhanced Customer Communications

Kaseya is reorganizing itself around three major office hubs in Boston, Mass.; Henderson, Nevada and San Jose, Calif., according to CEO Yogesh Gupta. The company also is preparing a range of communications to update customers — including Kaseya’s large base of MSPs, according to Chief Marketing Officer Loren Weinberg Jarrett. The moves come as the IT automation software and cloud company confirms some staff cuts last week.

Gupta declined to discuss exact headcount figures but said an earlier MSPmentor estimate (at least 50 positions eliminated) was in the ballpark. The changes were required for multiple reasons, he said, including:

All of the staff cuts were communicated simultaneously last week. During a phone call with MSPmentor today, Gupta thanked current and former Kaseya employees for their professionalism amid the cuts. As the company looks ahead, Gupta notes that Q3 2013 booking were the strongest the company has ever seen. “They were stronger than last year’s Q3 bookings by a big margin,” Gupta added, though he declined to share exact figures since the company is privately held.

M&A Deals Triggered Next Moves

Insight Venture Partners acquired Kaseya in mid-2013, and soon after rolled Zyrion and Rover Apps into the company. Gupta succeeded former CEO Gerald Blackie (who exited). The new Kaseya executive team spent the past three months analyzing how to reoganize the acquired businesses into a single, more effective entity. “Our goal is very simply to make sure we do we do right by our customers,” said Gupta, referring to the company’s MSP and corporate IT adopters.

“If you look at things using three metrics — what is our customer base and how is it growing each year; revenue; and people — then on all three fronts things are really good,” said Gupta. He said Kaseya has been installing new support and financial systems to help scale the company and automate processes that had been manual. “If you have the right systems — for billings and financials, for instance — the you don’t need to hire more financial people. We’re making sure the mix is right.”

Among Gupta’s goals: Make sure a culture of engineering emerges — and the engineering organization has to be agile. “One of the knocks against our industry and Kaseya is we make a lot of promises and we’re short on delivery,” said Gupta. “We’re changing that. We won’t over promise and under deliver. If we say we’ll do something, we’ll do it on time with good quality. Businesses have to trust our software to run their business. We need to take that responsibility of trust much more seriously than historically we have.”

That effort starts with product quality — and more frequent code updates, which should reach MSPs and IT departments two or three times per year going forward. Kaseya plans to roll out roadmaps to customers as 2014 approaches. And the roadmap will include both on-premises and cloud enhancements.

MSPs and corporate IT customers should also expect more frequent, deeper communications with Kaseya’s executive team. The effort will include near-term meetings with Kaseya’s customer advisory council, plus webcasts where customers can pose questions directly to Kaseya’s leadership team, according to Chief Marketing Officer Loren Weinberg Jarrett, who joined the company about a month ago.

Surprising Changes? Not Really

MSPmentor wasn’t surprised by Kaseya’s layoffs — especially since the company had been decentralized and absorbing other companies. Based on the call with Gupta and Weinberg Jarrett, it sounds like Kaseya has been in close contact with its advisory council — with broader partner communications coming soon.

The MSP software market as a whole remains in transition — rapidly evolving beyond point products to more comprehensive suites or platforms for IT automation and management. Overall, I suspect Kaseya remains one of the largest industry players, though MSPmentor still hears about defections to other MSP platforms. Kaseya’s communications with MSPs will be especially important over the few weeks. Industry chatter about the company layoffs has been swirling, and rivals continue to call on Kaseya’s customer base trying to win business to alternative platforms.