New Kaseya Europe Leader Details Expansion Plans

Ireland native Dermot McCann said he is excited to head up Kaseya’s Europe operations after a long stint in Australia.

“I didn’t come back for the weather!" he said.

McCann spoke to Channel Futures at Kaseya DattoCon Europe in – a grey and rainy – Dublin, Ireland. There he detailed his plans for the newly created role, after most recently overseeing Kaseya’s APAC business.

“Kaseya has built a very strong business in Asia Pacific,” he said. “We’ve gone from literally two people to 150 over the space of a few years. We’ve got a very engaged channel and partner community. I’ve been mostly in the IT channel in some way, shape or form, either as a service provider, or as a vendor in the telco space or running my own businesses. So understanding the nuances in that region is one of the things that has led to our success.”

McCann aims to recreate that success in Europe.

“I grew up in Galway in the West of Ireland. I went to university in Brighton [U.K.]. So coming back, I understand some of those nuances. I lived in France. I’ve lived in Germany, and they are different.”

Kaseya Pushing Into DACH Region

Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola told Channel Futures that the firm has grown by roughly 50% in EMEA over the past 12 months.

“It’s a big growth area. I would expect us to double our staff. Actually the headcount in EMEA has about tripled in the last year because of our Dundalk [Ireland] office, [where] we do a lot of R&D, finance, technical operations," said Voccola, who will be on stage for a one-on-one-interview at the MSP Summit, presented by the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, in Atlanta, Sept. 16-19.

Related:Register Now for The MSP Summit, Sept. 16-19, Atlanta

Alongside Ireland, Kaseya has a presence in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.K. It also has a development center in Krakow, Poland.

Kaseya's Dermot McCann

“That’s exciting, because we can get really close to our partners there. We can listen to some feedback; we can engage closer,” said McCann.

Next up is a planned push into the DACH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) region.

“You’ll see in 2024 and '25 a huge push into DACH and then 2025-26 Southern Europe … more in Italy, Spain and France,” revealed Voccola.

Increasing MSP Profit Margins

Meanwhile, much of the discussion at DattoCon has focused on Kaseya’s new subscription program for MSPs, Kaseya 365. The company said there are already 3000 partners signed up six weeks after launch.

“The feedback is a little bit of acknowledgment that the challenges that [MSPs are] facing, that their customers are facing,” said McCann.

Specifically, he said, MSPs are dealing with an exponential increase in cybersecurity, additional complexity in managing their customers’ environments, alongside unrealistic demands from customers to deliver solutions and services at a low cost.

Related:Kaseya Teases Big Changes to Partner Program

“Everybody wants security, but not everybody’s wants to pay for it,” said McCann. “So we’ve launched a subscription where they’ve got antivirus, RMM software, managed backup, EDR solutions, all of the essential solutions that their end users are going to need in a single subscription.”

Importantly, Kaseya said 365 offers MSPs an opportunity to grow their profit margins from an average of 10-15%. This is particularly the case when combined with Kaseya ProfitFuel.

“We assess the cogs of their businesses, the cost of goods sold and look at their current technologies and map it to Kaseya technologies to drive a 30-40% cost reduction in their operating costs. [They] are designed to drive an incremental increase in their EBIDA or net profit that fuels the growth. It allows them to purchase new technologies or enter new markets or hire new staff," said McCann.

Kaseya Europe: A Focus On Compliance

Asked about his plans for 2024 and beyond, McCann has promised some announcements for the end of the year.

For now, the company will continue to extend its TruPeer program to European MSPs. There will also be a focus on enabling MSPs to help their customers demonstrate compliance to various standards in the region.

“It’s not just compliance,” said McCann. “It’s how do you manage that compliance? How do you address that compliance? How do you have solutions that ensure that the compliance has been enforced? That will continue to be an issue, an opportunity, for partners.”