Kaseya’s Voccola on Next Version of IT Complete, Automation, AI, 'Stagnant' ConnectWise

KASEYA CONNECT GLOBAL — During his keynote at this week’s Kaseya Connect Global, CEO Fred Voccola talked about the latest modules and improvements that put the 2.0 into IT Complete, Kaseya’s MSP technology platform. MSPs liked what they heard and, naturally, wanted to know what they can expect in version 3.0.

When Channel Futures asked Voccola for some insights into the next version, he joked that he just finished polishing 2.0 and there was no way he was taking about version 3.0. But after we twisted his arm a bit, he ended up sharing some thoughts on the platform’s future, as well as automation, the future of AI, the state of ConnectWise and why the haters chatter about Datto customers leaving Kaseya for its competitors.

(Channel Futures this year named Voccola Influencer of the Year, along with Aryaka’s Craig Patterson.)

Channel Futures: MSPs want to know what to expect in IT Complete 3.0. Can you fill them in?

Kaseya‘s Fred Voccola: So, what’s next? We’re going to keep doubling down on making our MSPs successful. I’m not gonna give you like soundbites. That’s what we do. We put a lot of money behind solving the core problems that structurally hinder MSPs. We’re a software provider. We find our platform and we’re going to make it even better. It’ll be more integrated. My eureka kind of vision is to have one place with every single piece of functionality that an MSP needs at the tip of their fingertips that’s seamlessly integrated. Just like Microsoft Office.

You remember the “Office” productivity wars, right? There was Lotus and Word Perfect. But Microsoft won. The reason they won: Their playbook was pretty simple. Not easy to do, but simple in a contextual understanding: Let’s integrate these products so they all feel like features of one product. So today, if you’re using PowerPoint and you want to put a “table” in it, you right-click “table,” or you just put Excel into PowerPoint. That’s awesome. The same spellcheck works across all of the modules of Office. It’s crazy to think about.

So Microsoft builds it all into one and makes sure it has everything in it. And Office has continued to expand. It now has Teams because people need collaboration software, it has One Note, it has a browser. Everything you need is in Office. And they charge a fraction for [new features]. If you go back to 1998 and you bought Word Perfect, Lotus and Harvard Graphics, you’re gonna pay four times what you’d pay for Office, where you got everything together. And Office worked better together.

So our vision – where we’re gonna get with IT Complete 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 – is it’ll always be “complete.” We have to make sure that when our MSPs want another type of functionality, we have it in that system. That’s why we bought Vonahi [Security, a maker of an automated network pentesting platform that evaluates risks in real-time]. That’s why we bought audIT (a sales presentation tool). And we’ll continue to do that. That’s why I bought Datto, etc.

Second thing is, we are gonna make them even more and more integrated, so it acts and seems like one. Every single module on our platform has a common look and feel. And then we’re gonna do everything in our power to keep lowering our prices. We’re a third to a half less expensive than if someone went and bought 17 products from 17 people.

Every dollar that an MSP spends on software is a dollar less of profit they make. That’s simple. And we want MSPs powered by Kaseya to be the best. And that means they deliver the best service and they make the most money. That’s our mission. So that’s what we’ll keep doing time and time again.

See our slideshow above for the rest of our conversation with Voccola. He goes more in-depth on IT Complete, automation and a “stagnant” ConnectWise.