Fred Voccola Talks Overall Acquisition Strategy, How Kaseya Supports Partners

KASEYA CONNECT IT GLOBAL — Day three of Kaseya’s Connect IT Global conference featured blueprints (ranging from security, to peer groups to compliance). 

Gary Pica, president, TruMethods, Kaseya, taught audience members how to “unleash the power” of the peer. Robin Robins, CEO and founder, Technology Marketing Toolkit, gave attendees the framework for the ultimate MSP marketing plan. Max Pruger, general manager, compliance, Kaseya, schooled attendees on how to identify hidden security risks, and vulnerability management best practices. Jason Manar, CISO, Kaseya, discussed current and actionable items that organizations can and should be doing to prepare for any incident — covering incident response plans, business continuity, disaster recovery and other topics.

Sitting Down with the CEO

Channel Futures sat down with Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola at the conference to go a little more in-depth on some of the finer points of his opening keynote the day prior. These being the product updates and launches happening or coming up, how Kaseya is supporting partners, and the company’s acquisition strategy (including the snap-up of… you guessed it… Datto). 

Kaseya’s Fred Voccola

The first, and probably the most obvious point has to do with integrating an ecosystem such as Datto’s. With partner sentiment being a little less “we’re in the upside down” than it was back in April, we still want to know … how? Why? What is the overall acquisition strategy? 

“It’s pretty simple. We want to provide a platform that addresses the unique problems that MSPs face,” said Voccola. There are four big ones. One is that they all suffer from vendor fatigue. Second is that all of the products that the vendors use, they’re not automated together. As a result, technicians aren’t super efficient. The third is that most software users in general only access 15%-20% of the capabilities of their products, because there are so many. That obviously hurts efficiency. And finally, things are exorbitantly expensive. So why do we keep acquiring technologies? We buy the best in every category of what these MSPs need to do, and we integrate them together.”

All of the Acquisitions

Voccola referenced Kaseya’s IT Complete solution, which aims to make MSPs more efficient, profitable and able to drive effective services, despite the aforementioned challenges. 

“We acquire these companies/technologies because, simply put, complete IT must be… complete,” added Voccola. “So we have to have functionality for every type of managed service that an MSP needs to deliver for their clients, and enable functionality for the MSP to run its own business.”

In terms of Datto, specifically, Voccola has highlighted the acquisition motives from about every angle. But in this chat, he put it in simple terms. The brand is amazing. And, Kaseya plans to keep it that way.

“Datto, the name, the brand … we always do what we believe in. We strive to keep these brands their own,” said Voccola. “Why do we do that? Because it prevents people internally, as well as customers, from thinking, ‘Oh, well, Datto’s gone.’ Not the case. We’re a melting pot; we take the best of everyone that we buy and plug them in. So Datto makes Kaseya better, Kaseya makes Datto better. That’s what we do. And the other reason is because we can, and we should. We think we can deliver a lot more value to customers.”

Voccola stressed that Kaseya has an obligation to execute on that strategy. The strategy is everything.

Product Updates

At the risk of only focusing on the (ahem) acquisition of the year, Channel Futures also asked which of the many product updates across the Kaseya companies Voccola is most excited about. The answer is named after a furry, four-pawed bundle of barks that goes by the name Cooper. 

For context, within KaseyaOne, the Cooper AI Engine is the technology behind Cooper’s Insights. These insights aim to help partners get the most out of the Kaseya modules they own.

“Cooper touches every single module of IT Complete,” said Voccola. “I’ll give an analogy. Everyone uses Excel; every one of your readers knows Excel. Excel can help you build a house, it can teach you how to speak French in a week, if you want. But how many people know that? How many people use the full power of Excel? One percent, maybe? All these BI tools that exist — companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on business intelligence tools, when Excel can do 75%-90% of it for far less money. For one 100% of the cost. A tool like Cooper is so powerful. There are so many implications to fundamentally change the overburdened MSP technician’s life.”