LogMeIn Responds to Autotask Acquisition of CentraStage RMM

Autotask‘s announcement of its acquisition of CentraStage comes one week after releasing its integration with remote monitoring and management (RMM) provider LogMeIn (LOGM)’s Central platform for MSPs. This leaves many in the channel wondering: How’s Autotask’s relationship with LogMeIn going to work?

Autotask competitor, Tigerpaw Software’s CEO James Foxall was quick to raise concerns that the deal will box in Autotask’s customers and place any RMM vendor with a significant installed base with Autotask at risk.

However, LogMeIn doesn’t seem to be bothered by the Autotask/CentraStage deal.

“Autotask’s acquisition of CenterStage suggests a clear desire to grow their wallet share amongst their existing base of customers and creates a scenario that may be challenging for traditional RMM vendors,” LogMein Channel Development Vice President Ted Roller told MSPmentor.

“While LogMeIn’s products are often a popular solution for remote management, the benefits they provide often go beyond what is possible or desirable with traditional RMM,” he said. “And this makes us a complementary part of any managed services portfolio.”

As far as Autotask’s commitment to the channel, Roller speaks highly of it, noting that the PSA vendor has “always made a real and genuine commitment to maintaining open integrations with synergistic vendors in the channel space, and I see no reason to believe that is going to change.”

“LogMeIn Central and Autotask are very often staples of the managed services tool kit, and both companies are focused on expanding their portfolios to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the modern IT environment,” he said. “I believe, in many ways, this acquisition may create even more opportunity for LogMeIn to engage with the Autotask customer base across all our channel focused products.”

Autotask Global Sales Senior Vice President told MSPmentor that all RMM integrations with the company’s professional services automation (PSA) platform will continue to be supported.

“Our strategy is fixated on helping our clients achieve enhanced value from our solutions at an accelerated rate,” he said. “We believe an extremely tight RMM integration coupled with a completely new role based UI will help us deliver on that promise.”

He continued: “We also believe that it is imperative that we continue to support all the RMM integrations along with the hundreds of other third-party integrations that we have in place today so that our customers can make the choices that are right for their businesses.”

Tigerpaw’s Foxall, however, said questions remain. “If I were GFI Max, N-able, Kaseya, Continuum, AVG — perhaps even LogMeIn — I would be thinking about my go-forward plan,” he said.

Follow CJ Arlotta on Twitter @cjarlotta and Google+ for further updates on the story above — or if you just want to say hello.