Kaseya Connect User Conference: Top 10 Keynote Highlights

During the Kaseya Connect User Conference this morning, CEO Gerald Blackie said the company is marching toward $100 million in annual revenues. Blackie and other Kaseya executives also described the bigger mission for Kaseya 2, a managed services platform that experienced a launch delay from 2009 to early 2010. And that’s not all. Here are 10 highlights from Blackie’s keynote plus additional observations from Kaseya Executive VP Jim Alves and President Mark Sutherland.

1. Going Global: Kaseya will add a Kaseya Connect conference in Europe or Asia in 2011, according to Blackie.

2. Who’s here?: Roughly 250 managed services provider (MSP) companies are here, representing about five percent of Kaseya’s global MSP base. Translation: It sounds like Kaseya now has about 5,000 MSP customers worldwide. Also, Blackie says the attendees represent about 750,000 endpoints in the room — though I need to check if those endpoints represent active endpoints or licensed endpoints that are still waiting for customers.

3. Kaseya Business Update: Blackie says Kaseya now has 5 million endpoints, 400 employees, no debt, and no venture capital. The company is profitable and cash-flow positive. “We can chart our own destiny as we near the nine-figure revenue mark,” Blackie asserts. Translation: $100 million in annual revenues sounds within Kaseya’s reach. Still, I need to check how many of those 5 million endpoints are actually active.

4. Single Pane of Glass Automation: Blackie described how Kaseya hopes to offer a single framework that resembles ERP in power and an operating system in terms of open APIs (application programming interfaces). But it’s going to take time. Blackie mentioned that the new Kaseya 2 platform is “not version 5. It’s an entirely new framework. It wasn’t a simple upgrade.”

5. Kaseya 2: Alves and Sutherland further described the vision for the Kaseya 2 platform. The K2 platform has taken some heat from some MSPmentor readers who allege the platform contained key bugs and had heavy resource requirements upon its February 2010 launch.

Alves and Sutherland described how K2 is a platform for the next decade, “or at least the next five years,” quipped Sutherland. Added Blackie: “It’s about the climb to K2. Getting to the top is logistically tough.”

The deeper point: Moving to Kaseya 2 requires careful planning. Sutherland also conceded that K2 experienced some Ajax-related development challenges in mid-2009, forcing the company to delay the platform until early 2010. But Sutherland assured attendees that Kaseya had addressed the issues.

“Now that we have the Kaseya 2 platform in place, the whole idea is to layer functionality and applications on top,” says Alves. “Now that we have a platform in place we can go deep in functionality.”

6. Where’s the Cloud?: The initial K2 release is an on-premises offering. Blackie says a cloud offering — dubbed Kaseya Kloud, apparently, is in beta test and has key SaaS partners in place such as Ingram Micro (Australia, I believe), Jamcracker and ASCII Group.

Also, I’m still checking to see if Kaseya has formalized its SaaS pricing. And ultimately, it sounds to me like Kaseya SaaS remains a work in progress.

7. More Stuff Coming: Sutherland and Alves described how Kaseya 2 will increasingly support discovery, inventory, hardware asset management, software asset management, agent procedures and custom reports. Alves also said Kaseya will remain an agent-based platform.

8. Cross Platform: Sutherland described how K2 will support a broad mix of Unix/Linux devices, Macintoshes, iPads and other emerging platforms. “Every business has a Mac or two or 20 in them,” said Sutherland. “Macs are a first-class citizen in the Kaseya world.”

9. Plug In Your Applications: Blackie promised that Kaseya would offer a “complete exposure of APIs,” so that software developers and MSPs could plug additional applications into the platform. Also, Alves says any and all parties will be able to integrate into the K2 framework. I suspect online backup and security software companies will likely be the first to leverage the APIs, based on several side conversations here at the conference.

10. Security and Backup: Blackie hinted that Kaseya will work more closely with Kaspersky Lab (security) and Acronis (backup software). Sutherland confirmed that Kaseya will switch its anti-virus engine from AVG to Kaspersky Lab in a few months.

Meanwhile, I’m still pursuing answers to five key questions that I raised ahead of the conference. More thoughts on MSPmentor really soon. Plus, here’s a recap from Day One (June 1) in case you missed it.

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