ConnectWise Rides the Next Wave of Partners with CloudConsole

AUTOMATION NATION — ConnectWise CloudConsole, for managing, monitoring and billing, is now available to any technology solution provider (TSP) for managing and monitoring Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure cloud, expanding the availability of the product beyond ConnectWise Manage partners — traditionally MSPs.

The announcement, made Tuesday at Automation Nation 2017 in Orlando, exemplifies the vendor’s strategic company vision, as outlined by Brett Cheloff, general manager, ConnectWise Automate, and Craig Fulton, chief product officer at ConnectWise, keynote speakers.

ConnectWise’s Brett Cheloff

Last year at IT Nation, ConnectWise was rebranded into a single brand — sell, automate, manage, and control and console.

“Now we have Automate v12, in pilot, with a single UI across the suite of products for consistency and helping you be more efficient with our products,” said Cheloff.

Equally exciting is the news that Automate is moving to the web with version 1 availability expected in time for IT Nation, in November.

“You’ll get the full power of Automate without the thin client,” he added, although noted that the thin client will still be supported — but the web is the direction that Automate is moving. ConnectWise also is working on a network mapping tool for the Automate product suite, and continues to work on making ConnectWise Control faster.

Back to Connectwise CloudConsole, initially launched last year: The company says it became imperative to provide any TSP that manages cloud services – MSPs, VARs, CSPs, etc. – the ability to take advantage of the shift in customer spending priorities to cloud.

Some product features: the ability to manage, monitor and bill Office 365 and Azure customers from a single console; automated billing; reduce complexity by managing users, groups, mailboxes, virtual services, SQL databases, websites and storage as well as add and delete accounts, all from one place; and easily expand a customer’s business footprint.

And, the company isn’t stopping here with the Microsoft expansion. By November, expect to hear more about Cisco monthly billing services and AWS, said Fulton.

“We’re building essential services behind the scenes to tie together products … that’s our vision: One unified suite that you can run your business on,” he said, or central user management including usage data, e-commerce, and automated integration.

Looking forward, ConnectWise is also working with vendors to expand the platform via APIs, to include more applications.

“So this is what we’re doing, this is our vision; we want to tie everything together, one suite for you to do your job,” said Fulton.

Jerome Price, IT systems engineer at AMA TechTel, Amarillo, Texas, is a first -ime attendee at Automation Nation. Price is helping his firm, an ISP telecom company, grow its business with the launch of an IT managed services division about a year-and-a-half ago.

Price is excited to learn as much as he can about ConnectWise Automate, the tool AMA TechTel users to manage its customers.

“Our goal is to get all of our existing customers on our service, managing the networks and hardware, and to continue to grow from there,” he said.