Kaseya Brings RapidFire Into Its IT Complete Vision

Business management software provider Kaseya on Wednesday said it is buying Atlanta-based RapidFire Tools, and intends to bring the provider’s portfolio of assessment, security and compliance products into its IT Complete product suite.

RapidFire is the latest in a series of Kaseya acquisitions, including its massive purchase of backup and disaster recovery provider Unitrends in May.

Kaseya’s stated goal is to provide a comprehensive platform where it offers managed service-ready software products that allow MSPs to provide a managed service for every type of technology consumption that its customers will want. RapidFire offers a range of solutions that help fill out Kaseya’s IT Complete ambitions, including Network Detective for network and security assessments and Cyber Hawk for continuous cybersecurity threat detection and alerting.

It’s RapidFire’s compliance management solutions like Audit Guru, however, that Kaseya is most excited about, according to the two companies’ CEOs. Kaseya’s Fred Voccola and RapidFire’s Michael Mittel say the two companies have been engaged in co-development efforts for the last year. The resulting product is Kaseya Compliance Manager (KCM), a compliance management solution that they say is fully integrated with the Kaseya IT Complete platform and its remote monitoring and management (RMM) product, Virtual Systems Administrator (VSA).

As small and midsize businesses (SMBs) continue to grapple with the regulatory headaches that have primarily plagued enterprises in the past, Kaseya says they are turning to MSPs for an automated IT solution for monitoring and managing compliance for requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, ISO and PCI.

“Compliance solutions for those folks are a bunch of lawyers and a bunch of accountants, and manual work that’s done by some IT guys and gals. There are no products for it,” says Voccola. “Compliance has come downstream. It’s no longer only the burden of the Fortune 5000 … this solution set is a godsend for small-to-midsize businesses and the MSPs that serve them.”

Fred Voccola

Fred Voccola

Mittel says that the prevalence of compliance worries presents a wealth of opportunities for managed service providers. Fines for noncompliance aside, SMBs can’t afford to assume the sometimes-crippling penalties to reputation and public goodwill that come with a breach that could have been prevented. The problem, he explains, is that the production of compliance documentation is very complicated and tedious.

“It affords the opportunity for the trusted IT source for these SMBs to step in with these services,” says Mittel. “There [are] a bunch of ‘checklist’ products on the market, but RapidFire Tools is the only company that I know of that really has an automated solution to this problem and allows the MSP to use our technology as a foundation for them to offer new revenue-generating services for their customers.”

Michael Mittel

Michael Mittel

For the time being, Kaseya and RapidFire will continue to operate two separate partner programs. Over time, says Voccolla, there will be benefits that come from a long-term integration; but for now, RapidFire will run as an autonomous business unit inside of Kaseya and will continue to form relationships with different distributors and OEM partners.

“We will absolutely remain an open platform,” says Voccola. “That’s something we’ve been saying forever. We’ve demonstrated that for three-plus years, and our work speaks for itself.”

Voccola says that the two companies operate under similar understandings around customer service and empowerment of employees, and that RapidFire, which started out as an MSP, understands how to “build a win-win business framework and apply that to an execution model.”

Mittel tells us that the capabilities Kaseya brings to the table such as a global presence and midmarket-enterprise (MME) customer base will help RapidFire reach its full potential.

As for Kaseya, its buying spree isn’t yet over. Voccola tells us that we can expect another acquisition announcement in the next two or three weeks, and then another “monster” announcement in the December-January time frame.