expectations that ultimately the prod- new player will jump into the market working with the people at N-able, he
uct doesn’t live up to.” and shake things up, as Zenith did. decided to switch to Kaseya. “At the time,
Clinton Gatewood, vice president of “As new products come on the mar- their technology was a little more stable,”
corporate development at Zenith, says ket with better and more advanced he says.
he believes complexity explains some capabilities, it makes sense to make Gatewood says at least 52 percent of
of the switching that has taken place the switch,” says Heartland’s Cage. the partners that Zenith recruits every
between MSPs. Add complexity to Rory Sanchez, president of South month come from the competition. “I
the issue of profitability and you start Florida solution provider SL Powers, suspect the number, but not all new
to understand the challenges MSPs says his company was using Kas- partners disclose exactly what applica-
face when they choose a platform, eya when he decided to add Zenith tion they are utilizing,” he says.
Gatewood says. because of the vendor’s virtual NOC Partners coming from the compe-
Many solution providers invest in service, which takes tition, Gatewood adds,
a platform thinking that it will suf- some of the day-to-day are more than welcome
fice in building a managed services monitoring out of the because they already
model. It’s what Gatewood describes hands of the provider know the challenges
as the “field of dreams” managed ser- partners. of delivering managed
vices syndrome: Build it and they will “At first Zenith was services. The partners,
come. not a complete replace- in turn, like Zenith,
But then it turns out that the least- ment for the Kaseya tool. because the vendor gives
important piece of building a managed Kaseya was faster and them a turnkey solution,
services business is the platform, he more efficient at remote he says.
says. “The real cost in providing a control, but the Zenith “Not only can the pro-
managed service is process creation, tools quickly caught up,” vider quickly offer man-
process change management, imple- Sanchez recalls. Gatewood: “Now, in managed aged services, but he can
mentation, consistent and diligent Now SL Powers pri- services, the provider assumes provide and sell the end
application of processes, and man- marily uses the Zenith the risk.” client a good base of ser-
power.” platform. The Kaseya product, Sanchez vices while understanding the risk, costs
In the past, Gatewood adds, solution adds, comes in handy for project work. and margins associated with the services
providers could address client needs “Any time we are doing a project, we sold,” Gatewood says.
simply by adding technology. deploy Kaseya seats to that client dur- Sandiford, for his part, says he is con-
“A provider would simply have to ing the project so that our engineers fident that Level Platforms’ technology,
learn how to install the application can work or address issues remotely,” which is based on open architecture
or hardware and not necessarily con- he says. “We’ve actually been able to and promotes collaboration between
centrate on managing the solution,” project manage or even complete out- partners, vendors and customers, will
Gatewood says. “The risk was assumed of-state projects with minimal travel or keep partners signing up.
by the client and not the provider. on-site time.” About 10 percent of Level Platforms’
Now, in managed services, the pro- SL Powers was one of the early new partners each month, he says, are
vider assumes the risk. The responsi- adopters of the managed services conversions from other vendors.
bility of the provider no longer ends model, having first used the N-able “We have also been the victim of
once a piece of hardware is installed platform to deliver the services. switches over the past year due to some
or an application is set up and con- “When we first went with N-able product issues we had, but people are
figured.” they were about the only game in town, loving the new release and I expect this,
and shortly thereafter, Kaseya hit the that we will never lose a partner from
Partner round robin market,” Sanchez says. “N-able only here on,” Sandiford says.
managed services platform vendors did server and infrastructure monitor- Despite the switches SL Powers has
have come to expect churn in their ing, and Kaseya mainly played on the made, Sanchez says he believes most
partner ranks. The platform round desktop; however, they both knew that of the platform vendors these days
robin shows no sign of ending any they needed to do both. Eventually, are doing a decent job. “Most of these
time soon, and vendors know that both companies were providing the guys arepretty goodatdeliveringtheir
even if it slows, it may be a temporary whole enchilada.” releases on time and without bugs,”
respite. There is always a chance that a Even though Sanchez says he loved he says. ´
