Kaseya Partner: New RMM Release Shows Company 'Mojo'
A lengthy and well-run beta testing program that culminated this week in the latest release of Kaseya's remote monitoring and management (RMM) product, VSA 9.4, is evidence of the company's newfound focus, says one longtime partner.
"The mojo has completely changed with different management and a renewed focus on customer feedback, and on the whole feedback loop of 'We have this issue,' and they're truly putting their money where their mouth is," said Chris Banta, director of security and automation for Alpharetta, Ga.-based Safe Systems Inc., which provides IT services for community banks.
Safe Systems, which has been a Kaseya partner for 10 years and belongs to the company's Partner Success Council, has been kicking the tires of the beta for a while. "This is the highest-quality release that we've seen from coding and certainly the most collaborative release, as well," Banta said.
A Kaseya spokesperson confirmed that the four-month beta testing timeframe for version 9.4 was the longest beta testing period the company has held for a VSA release.
When he took over as Kaseya CEO a year and a half ago, Fred Voccola promised to focus on making the products powerful, easy to use and scalable. "It's demonstrating the continued commitment to shut up and listen to our customers," Voccola said in a telephone interview about the latest release. "It's the fourth release that we've had where we've met all of our commitments."
Key enhancements for 9.4 center on look and feel, which were overdue for refurbishment, as well as more cross-platform support for macOS and Linux. Company executives say the process of discovering devices on a network is much faster and more powerful in the current release, helping MSPs make a strong impression in presales engagements. Another focus was on proactive alerting and automations to allow MSPs to cover more endpoints with the same number of technicians. Meanwhile, Kaseya is also continuing to put pricing pressure on competitors, this time on the cloud backup front, executives say.
For Banta, the changes are welcome. "There's this huge, old culture of bashing Kaseya," he said. "We're seeing the culture shift at conferences."
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 26, 2017