Kaseya User Conference: 30 Highlights (30 to 21)

A range of managed services trends are surfacing here at the Kaseya User Conference in Las Vegas. We’ll be counting down the top 30 trends and takeaways over the next two days. Here are items 30 to 21 on our list:

30. The Book on Service Level Agreements: Matthew Dickerson, founder and managing director of Small Business Rules, is generating buzz with a new edition of his book “SLAM” (short for Service Level Agreement Model).

29. Getting Into Hosting: Kaseya is going to offer hosted services to MSPs that don’t want to build out their own NOCs, and to MSPs that need specialized solutions outside of their core competencies, according to CEO Gerald Blackie.

28. Big Growth: Kaseya’s revenue topped $25 million in 2007, up from about $11 million in 2006, according to a chart that Blackie showed audiences in his keynote. He said Kaseya expects to double in size again this year.

27. Hitting A Bump: The Kaseya 2008 platform release hit bumps because of several bugs plus rapid uptake, conceded Kaseya President Mark Sutherland. Sixty percent of customers moved to the new release within 2 weeks of launch, compared to a 10 percent uptake for earlier release cycles. Hotfixes and several other business process changes within Kaseya have addressed the big issues. And a service pack rolling up the fixes is due out this summer.

26. Breakfast with Bob: I’ll be sitting down with Autotask CEO Bob Godgart on Tuesday morning, June 3. Check back for key thoughts from the breakfast.

25. The View From Afar: We’re in Las Vegas, but there’s considerable chatter here about managed services in India, Australia and several emerging markets. Kaseya just opened an India office, and expects that country to rank among its fastest-growing regions.

24. Corporate Compliance: Kaseya is focused on compliance mandates, standards and best practices such as ITIL, SAS70, HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley.

23. Aiding Acquisitions: An IT director tells me his company has used Kaseya to speed multiple business acquisitions since 2007.

22. Enter the C Suite: ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini takes the stage later today, and will be describing how MSPs can become “virtual CIOs” within their customer settings.

21. Staying Private: Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie told me that the company will remain privately held, has no debt and has no plans to go public. “This is a lifestyle business,” Blackie said, “where we answer to ourselves instead of venture capitalists.”

Items 20 to 11: Listed here.