01732 759725 28 ASK THE EXPERTS Is the quality of your VoIP telephone calls letting you down? “POUVEZ-VOUS M’ENTENDRE?” Springer Spaniel [Canis lupus familiaris] ...continued might move slower than a niche software company that can be very innovative and develop new features and be leading edge very quickly. That’s a typical trade-off when working with a big supplier: small supplier innovation versus the stability and cost benefits of working with one supplier for multiple solutions. Having multiple solution offerings from one supplier inherently means you’re going to get a better deal as opposed to individually purchasing those. But again, as you go along, I guess you’re on the hook for more, maybe giving them the leverage to be able to say ‘Well, I’ve got to raise the price’. Against that you have the benefits of an integrated solution that requires less work for you to offer to your customers. I still think that that outweighs the overall negatives of having a more consolidated vendor situation. Phil Sansom, Director Business Development and Alliances, at Barracuda MSP In the past MSPs were nervous about being too beholden to a single vendor, but that has changed. I think that’s because the technology offerings from vendors is solid, not just in one area with bits and pieces in other areas, but consistently right across their platforms. That makes a big difference. One thing that’s clear is an MSP is never suddenly going to switch and come across for everything. That’s never going to happen. So, how do you start to displace your competitors in the MSP space, because a lot of them have been running tools or part of their offering for many, many years? It is all about getting a foot in the door, wherever that might be. It could be email security, it could be backup, it could be the RMM tool and then you’ve got to earn your stripes, prove yourself. The new business engine that I now run for Barracuda is all about that foot in the door, after which we have a really solid process for gradually, gently opening it up. Email security is fairly fundamental and a key part of the Barracuda offering, but what we’re seeing with the acquisition of SKOUT in 2021, now Barracuda XDR, is that that’s proving to be a really great calling card because there’s a big thought leadership element to it. We don’t go in with a hard sales pitch from the very beginning. We say this is the problem and then we lead them along accordingly. We have to train them, we have to support them, we have to get on those calls with their end users, we have to hold their hand to get those first few deals done. That’s fine because it’s all part of the process. The exciting thing is that it’s a real opportunity for net new revenue, net new business and new customers for MSPs. A lot of the feedback we get from the market is that everyone’s doing similar things so it’s hugely competitive and difficult for MSPs to differentiate themselves. XDR presents a really good opportunity because they can follow our model with their customers, which is to open the door with cyber and then on the back of that open the customer up to all the other services they offer. Greg Jones, Vice President of Business Development, EMEA, at Datto, a Kaseya company Our IT Complete platform comprises security, RMM, MSP enablement, unified backup, documentation, auditing, and compliance and then PSA and service desk. That is a huge amount of technology. We will never say ‘take all our products and services’ because we have 42 different products now. Instead, it is about giving our customers and our partners choice and opportunity and bringing that to market at a competitive advantage over other solutions. Since Datto’s acquisition by Kaseya, we’ve been integrating our products into the IT Complete platform and streamlining the process of doing business with Kaseya right down to account management, so there’s one account manager across the board, one single point of contact. By the end of February, all Datto technology will be fully integrated, and we will keep adding to IT Complete.
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