The Doyle Report

Here’s hoping your week is off to a rousing start. In this edition of The Doyle Report, I reflect on a conversation about digitization and the Internet of Things (IoT) with ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini, go inside eFolder with marketing vice president Ted Hulsy and chat with Akumina Chief Revenue Office David Maffei about the impacts of a new deal his company has cut with Persistent. Enjoy.

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“What happens to society when hundreds of millions of people have that aimless, rudderless feeling of ‘I’ve been replaced by a very small box?’”

The above quote is from renowned “Jeopardy” champ Ken Jennings. He raises the question in a promotional video for the documentary film, “Most Likely to Succeed,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015.

How does this concern from a documentary film about childhood education relate to managed services? Allow me to explain. Better yet, I’ll tie the comment to a conversation I had with ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini at the 2015 IT Nation conference held in Orlando, Fla., the week of Nov. 9.

In an interview there, Bellini spoke animatedly about disruptive innovation, business transformation and more. In particular, he lit up when asked about the potential of new technologies such as business analytics, IoT sensors and cloud computing used in new and previously unimagined combinations. For all their potential, I wondered if the new technologies will have a disruptive impact on MSPs, VARs and more.

To drive home the point, I mentioned the example of Jennings, who describes his brush with advanced technology in the documentary film. If you’re not familiar, Jennings took on IBM’s Watson cognitive computer in the most public way possible: he battled the computer in a test of wits on the “Jeopardy” TV show in 2011. Beforehand, Jennings was confident that he would prevail against the machine even though a forerunner of IBM’s technology known as “Deep Blue” defeated world champ Garry Kasparov in a game of chess. Knowing a thing or two about artificial intelligence, Jennings thought IBM’s computer would be no match for the natural language processing capabilities and multi-subject matter expertise of the human brain.

Boy was he ever wrong.

If you’re not familiar with how the competition turned out—spoiler alert—let me put it bluntly: Jennings got his butt kicked. Ever thoughtful, he considered the implications of disruptive technologies afterward and even shared his concerns in a widely seen TED Talk in 2013. If he could be unceremoniously dethroned by a computer, wouldn’t others in white-collar positions dependent on critical thinking and decision making be as well?

That’s what I posed to Bellini. No doubt, he agreed, disruptive technology threatens more than task-oriented, labor-intensive positions today. Some jobs that rely on critical thinking will likely be displaced, he agreed, especially as the waves of disruption hit in ever more rapid fashion. But gloom and doom for smart, creative entrepreneurs? No way.

To hear Bellini tell it, the partner community has rarely had more opportunity before it. To him, digital technologies used in new and inventive combinations will provide great opportunity for channel companies to help bewildered customers navigate through disruptive periods of change.

“For every one thing that floats into the cloud and theoretically takes away a partner opportunity, there are 10 new things that are not going away. Routers, firewalls, access points, security… these still need MSP expertise. And now we can add digital signage, (physical) security and more to the list. When it comes to the Internet of Things, there are plenty of opportunities that we might not be able to think of today but will soon realize need MSP expertise,” says Bellini. “Disruptive innovation may change the opportunity/threat equation, but not the need for third party advisors.”

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While a branded ConnectWise event, the IT Nation show is truly becoming an industry-wide event. In fact, many companies that serve the MSP market target the event for important product and program announcements. One of those is eFolder.

If you’re not familiar with the company, eFolder is a technology developer that offers three different products for MSPs. They include business continuity (back up and disaster recovery), file synch and data protection. Slightly more than half of its revenue comes from BDR services sold through the channel. Another third comes from its file synch business, and the rest comes from the sale of data protection technology. 

Today, eFolder does business with 2,900 MSPs, most of whom are ConnectWise customers. But the 2,900 represent only a fraction of the estimated 50,000 MSPs that operate in North America, not to mention the additional 50,000 or so that operate around the world. For the past several years, eFolder has grown at approximately 50 percent per year. This, of course, is faster than the rate of growth for most MSPs. For eFolder to continue grow at its current trajectory, it must add new partners. To that end, the company is looking overseas and elsewhere for new customers.

Unlike others, the company has a one-tier, go-to-market business model. It does not sell through distributors in other words, but instead deals directly with MSPs. So that means it has to hustle and think creatively when it comes to recruitment.

At IT Nation, eFolder re-launched a program to promote the use of its Anchor file sync service inside MSPs. The program extends a free, not-for-resale version of the Anchor product to any MSP that wants it. eFolder has made similar offers before, but only on a limited, seasonal basis. Recently, it decided to make the program permanent.

“After using the product, we are convinced that partners will want to offer the same industrial-strength file sync to their customers,” said Ted Hulsy, vice president of marketing at eFolder. “Our take is that in a few years, file sync will be deployed as much as RMM and anti-virus solutions. Right now people are using consumer-grade solutions such as Dropbox, which are a highly unsecure means of synch for important business data."

Beyond the current “try-as-you-drive program,” eFolder has bigger ambitions. It believes it is ideally suited to provide what MSP and cloud providers, in particular, need most. This includes the functional equivalent of an “RMM” solution for the cloud. “There are tools to manage Office 365, single sign-on apps that give access to multiple SaaS services and more,” Hulsy said. “But there is no one in the cloud space bringing it all together. There are piece partners that offer single, limited function solutions to a particular problem. But nothing comprehensive."

 eFolder, he said emphatically, is not announcing anything today. But the idea is intriguing, right?

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Speaking of intriguing, Persistent Systems announced plans today to buy the services business of Akumina and make an investment into the company.

Persistent is a Pune, India-based company that develops software for commercial and enterprise customers. Lately, it has stepped up its efforts around software designed to help marketing professionals create engaging experiences for customers.

Akumina, meanwhile, is a U.S. based company with a software platform that builds on Microsoft’s SharePoint technology. The company’s InterChange platform “allows businesses to realize the full promise of SharePoint for intranet, portals and web sites,” according to the company.

David Maffei is Akumina’s Chief Revenue Officer and oversees its channel recruitment and management efforts. If the name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you got to know Maffei when he was at Carbonite, where he helped build a significant following for the company’s backup and recovery solutions.

Though he won widespread recognition for his work building Carbonite’s sizeable channel, Maffei says joining Akumina returns him to his roots. Instead of building massive channel programs for commercial software products, he’s more familiar with building programs for true consultancies. The software that Akumina sells, he notes, provides channel companies with an opportunity to add-on consulting services that are worth four-to-six times what Akumina software licenses cost.

“These are legitimate value-add professional consulting services, not basic break-fix services,” he said.

Today, the company works with roughly a dozen or so go-to-market partners, including Persistent. But a year from now, Maffei would like to have between 40-60 partners signed on. He fully expects 85 percent of these to build active, profitable practices. Some existing partners, such as GreenPages, have a profile of a more traditional channel company. But others, he said, hail from different parts of the industry. This includes Create Digital, a Richmond, Va., full-service digital agency that has developed social media campaigns for Verizon and others.

Because Create Digital struggles with the user-friendliness of SharePoint, it became an official Akumina implementation partner in October.

We’ll keep you apprised of Maffei’s progress.