IT automation software solutions vendor Kaseya has new ownership, a new president, new offerings and new plans to break into the Canadian market.
Kaseya made its last serious push into Canada in 2010, when it hired a Canadian general manager to build a cross-Canada organization including sales, marketing and technical resources to support Kaseya’s Canadian partners and managed service provider (MSP) customers. Three years later, the position no longer exists and, while Kaseya has some Canadian customers and partners, the new president sees the country as a largely untapped opportunity.
Much has changed for Kaseya in those three years. The company was acquired this summer by an investment firm, Insight Venture Partners. And insight brought in new leadership, with former FatWire Software CEO and CA Technologies CTO Yogesh Gupta coming on board as president and CEO. And Gupta quickly oversaw two acquisitions for Kaseya – Zyrion, a provider of ITIL-based monitoring services, and Rover Apps, which has a solution for secure BYOD.
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Gupta told CDN the acquisitions fill key gaps in Kaseya’s offerings, specifically in the areas of service management in public, private and hybrid cloud environments, and giving service providers a security option for the bring your own device (BYOD) trend. The integration is happening now, and the roadmap should be available shortly.
Both companies had limited channel programs, said Gupta, and bringing them into Kaseya’ program will be a priority, as is growing its own program.
“We’ve become much more channel friendly. We have tremendous partners but we need to do more,” saud Gupta. “This is an area I think we can do better going forward, and it’s part of our growth strategy.”
Kaseya has more than 6,000 MSP partners around the world, although Gupta said he doesn’t view them the same way as Kaseya’s reseller and distribution partners. Growing the reseller business is a priority going forward. Today, it varies by geography; some parts of Europe are nearly 100 per cent channel-driven; in the U.S. and Canada, it’s less than 10 per cent.
“It needs to be higher, and in the next five years I think we can grow both direct and indirect,” said Gupta, saying he’d like channel revenue to be closer to 1/3 of the business.
To help, Kaseya has a new global chief — Liz Lederer, as senior vice-president of global field marketing and Americas channel programs — focused on growing the channel business and increasing program effectiveness. Currently, Gupta said they’re working with distribution to reach a wider base of resellers.
“I know how the channel works, and what Kaseya has to offer fits the channel really well,” said Gupta.
Canada is largely greenfield for Kaseya at this point, and with its small and mid-market make-up, ripe for growth through a renewed channel push. Gupta said Kaseya has stumbled in Canada to date, saying the 2010 effort didn’t go too far.
“We do have a presence, but I don’t think we’re doing as well as we ought to. When I came to Kaseya and looked at the size of our business in Canada, I thought it would have been larger,” said Gupta. “We will have a renewed effort to build our business in Canada.”