N-able CEO Reveals Plans for 2022 as a Publicly Traded Company
“You’ll see us pushing and being a little bit more opportunistic in 2022.”
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MSPs currently find themselves at the intersection of three major tailwinds, said Pagliuca.
As such, they are “perfectly situated to really ride the tailwind to help themselves grow, but also help the customers grow.”
The first is labor scarcity. “It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Whether you’re trying to find security, IT or marketing professionals, or someone to help finish your construction project at home. There’s a labour shortage.”
“What that has done is create a net tailwind for the MSPs. The MSPs are challenged to find and retain labour just like everyone else. But they also have the opportunity to walk into larger companies. Traditionally these companies might have looked to bring on resources internally to do some of these tasks. But they are now are looking to the MSPs to augment their team and to this co-managed model.”
That is presenting a bigger opportunity for MSPs going into bigger accounts, said the CEO.
“That’s more revenue, that’s more profit.”
The second trend centers on the new hybrid workforce.
“The workforces are hybrid, they’re at home, they’re distributed. They’re using different types of operating systems and devices and workloads. People are using workloads and servers in the cloud in their closet, in the private cloud and a public cloud SaaS application.”
“MSPs need to help the small medium enterprise organise, aggregate and protect all of their data and access to all this stuff.”
The third tailwind is around cybersecurity.
“The conversation around security in the last 12 months, it’s shifted. It used to be it used to be people thought they could take a magic pill and be secure. But we all know that that’s not the case. It’s a layered security approach,” said Pagliuca.
But over the last 12 months, there’s been another awakening, he said.
“The fact is that we’re all in this together. Vendors like N-able, MSPs, their customers – they’re all in the supply chain together. If anyone in this ecosystem gets hacked, then potentially we’re all gonna be compromised. And that level of shared risk has brought in awareness and people are starting to ask different things to each other.
“People know if you’re a vendor, a partner or a customer, and not doing the right things and having the right level of cyber hygiene, you’re putting them at risk. So that’s elevated the conversation around risk and security, it’s become more of a ‘we’ thing.”
The CEO maintained that because of these tailwinds “it’s a pretty bullish era right now for the MSPs to grow in. The ones that are in the upper quartile, they should grow and they should go faster than the rest of the market.”
The difference from the bottom quartile and the top quartile is how you’re managing those three tailwinds, said Pagliuca.
“Are you leveraging automation? How are you helping with labour scarcity? Are you finding ways to go up market? Those that are looking at these tailwinds and embracing them, it’s a compounding effect. They’re using all three to get ahead. And the ones that are not, then they’re in that bottom quartile.”
“The difference between a bottom quartile and a top quartile MSP is 20% EBIDA. The moment is here, the market is here, the opportunity is here. Those three factors will determine how successful they are.”
Pagliuca also said MSPs in the top quartile are being “very prescriptive” with their customers as to what their cyber hygiene profiles look like. They are proactively adding on mandatory security services with a corresponding 15-20% increase on their bill. But they are making it clear the customer will be better protected.
“The lower quartile MSP is looking for the small medium enterprise to evaluate the risk. The upper quartile is telling the small medium enterprise what that risk formula is for them, and how they’re going to offset that being proactive. And that means additional services and they might lose some customers. They say, ‘if you’re not willing to sign up for this level of cyber hygiene, then you might not be the right customer for me.’ But in the long run, it’ll be better for them.”
The CEO said as the company approaches 2022 as a publicly traded company, N-able’s focus will be directed to growth initiatives.
Security will continue to be an area of investment, signalled by the appointment of chief security officer Dave MacKinnon earlier this year.
“Dave is augmenting a team of security professionals to make sure our internal processes are secured, hardened and are well-documented. How we build products, how we share our own information, how we access our customer information,” said Pagliuca.
“You might ask, ‘why is investing in security a growth initiative?’ Because I believe it to be a differentiator,” he added.
“There’s a lot of a lot of choices that MSPs have in the market. They need to make sure that the vendors they’re with are investing in security at the levels we are. Our product is the central nervous system for their business. They build their business on our platform. If that platform is not secure, they’re out of business. Period.”
The second initiative is focused on the platform itself. N-able brought in CTO, Mike Adler from RSA Security to help the company bring more products to market faster.
“We want to help MSPs become more efficient. We want MSPs to help with the migration to the cloud. We are going to help MSPs bring more security offerings. You’ll see us accelerate new product offerings in the market in 2022, that comes as an R&D investment”
And lastly, “it’s a little old school,” said Pagliuca, but it’s “bringing more humans in the loop.”
“These are folks assigned to MSPs, they’re not earning a commission. They’re there solely to help MSPs use the software better, grow their businesses, attract customers, maybe put a business plan together so that they can grow, help them with M&A targets.
“‘Head Nerds’ help with things like automation and security. There is a hacker team solely to help MSPs grow. There is also a named partner success employees that MSP can turn to for help.
“We grow when our partners grow. We have this symbiotic alignment with our customers. And so putting in humans in the loop just to help MSPs grow, not sell our software, just to help grow their business, makes our revenue stream richer one.”
Finally, Pagliuca said N-able will be pushing more SKUs and services in the market in 2022.
“We have an approach that’s multi-pronged. We can build like Office 365 offering. We can partner – the N-able EDR offering is via a partnership we’re leveraging the Sentinel ONE. And we acquire. And we will continue to be acquisitive if it’s the right thing for the MSPs. The vision really is to help with the digital evolution of the small medium enterprise.”
Finally, Pagliuca said N-able will be pushing more SKUs and services in the market in 2022.
“We have an approach that’s multi-pronged. We can build like Office 365 offering. We can partner – the N-able EDR offering is via a partnership we’re leveraging the Sentinel ONE. And we acquire. And we will continue to be acquisitive if it’s the right thing for the MSPs. The vision really is to help with the digital evolution of the small medium enterprise.”
“You’ll see us pushing and being a little bit more opportunistic in 2022.”
N-able’s John Pagliuca
Those are the words of John Pagliuca, N-able CEO and president. The comment follows a busy six months where the company was spun off from SolarWinds as an independent, publicly traded company.
“We augmented a completely new leadership team; we brought in a CTO, a chief marketing officer, a general counsel. We completely separated the organization’s structure, we rebranded with a new focus,” he told Channel Futures.
“We have this rally cry: ‘forward together.” It’s really giving birth to this new publicly traded company, but also to the MSP partners as we’re going through this together.”
Pagliuca was in London this week speaking to 60 of the company’s top U.K. MSPs. While there he shared his thoughts on the current major tailwinds that they must pursue for growth. He also dished on what separates a “bottom quartile MSP from a top quartile MSP.”
Finally, he flagged N-able’s plans for 2022, and how its focus on security will help it stand out in a crowded market.
Click on the slideshow above to find out what he said.
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