by Stephen D. Buyze, Founder SDB-Consulting
What was great about the recent DattoCon Paris?
For one, Datto’s rapid development. The conference was toned down a bit-- no fires on stage caused by cutting a brand-new server in half with a chop saw, or dumping a laptop in a fish tank. (Don’t you miss the good old days?)
The foundation of Datto is still the backup schema, which announced significant upgrades, especially with Ransomware running rampant. While the PSA, Networking, and RMM announcements held their own, the most impressive was how the various verticals are linked/daisy chained together.
Even the RMM to PSA integration was vastly improved. It won’t be long before there is one single accessibility pane of glass between all the Datto products.
Speaker: Robin Robins
It is amazing how the keynote platform can be used as the ultimate marketing platform-- and one that both Datto and Robin Robins benefited from. The presentation was all about her marketing kit offer, bouncing back and forth from examples of marketing done badly, to how her system fixes that inadequate marketing.
Now don’t get me wrong, Robin Robins’ presentation was good, but I am sure Datto is hearing a lot about mixing a Keynote with selling a product. In Datto’s defense, they were told that Robin Robins was unknown in Europe, and how European MSPs were asking for marketing help. As I talked with MSP’s on the exhibit floor, they confirmed what Datto was hearing.
If you do not know who Robin Robins is, it is worth your time checking her out. She does have Customers worldwide (the same as we do, but on a much smaller scale), and her results/guarantee are remarkable (since self-promotion is in vogue – so is ours).
Her last comment was that (for those who attended the show) Datto was offering an 80% discount off her list prices (not sure what the discount is without Datto kicking in) because as Robin said from the stage, “Datto realizes that the more we increase our sales, the more of their products we will be selling.”
Speaker: Magnus Lindkvist
I am still not sure what to make of Magnus Lindkvist. He was very interesting and gave the audience lots of laughs. He had some great points about how far technology has come, where we are now, and where we might be going.
While I am sure I will be quoting him for some time, there did not seem to be a crescendo or paradigm shift in my thinking. Overall, I am glad I went and heard both speakers (unlike Snoop Dog).
MSP Vendors Everyone Should Know About
The most exciting part of the show was the vendors. While the list was cut down to 39, there were many new and European-only players. Here are a few that caught my attention…
ID Agent and its dark web scans are awesome for lead gen. One MSP that I know set up a booth at a local building open house and was doing dark scans for event attendees. The leads and Customers secured out of the 2-hour event was amazing. For myself, I came up clean today for both the Business and my Personal emails … how about yours or our future?
MYKI password manager is impressive. While I am not an MSP, as I retired earlier this year to focus full-time as a consultant, I am still an SMB. As an SMB, this is the product I have been seeking.
The published price is 3.9E per seat, per month and the price goes down with quantity. It is non-cloud based, which means my keys to the kingdom are less at risk, while at the same time, my team has full access.
Full access is actually a misnomer; they have access to the group (folders) of passwords that we assign access to. The reason I mention that here is, they have an offering where an MSP can resell the product to their Customer. I did not get a chance to compare with Duo, but now that we are back in the States, we are looking at both products to see if they meet our needs.
Lion Guard, for me, was the best of show. It is a documentation automation processor for IT Glue. Which means rather than tasking Techs with the work they would prefer not to do, it can now be automated.
MSP Navigator is not a show sponsor, rather Victor R is an ex-Datto employee starting up his own niche software company for MSP’s. The software will map integrations between the different products that exist in your dataset, to make it easy to determine if a product will work with your existing technology stack.
For each vendor and product being considered, they then collect data points that are important to MSP’s when they are looking to make a buying decision (think of supported languages, security features, release cycle frequency), and provide tips and best practices on how to buy in order to shorten the cost and duration of their buying cycle. They have a presentation with an impression here.
Vade Secure should be the best in show. On the surface they are just another email protection software, protecting against phishing, spamming, GDPR compliance, blah, blah, blah.
What makes this company different is that it’s the one Austin McCord is betting on. This was downplayed at DattoCon Paris, outside of the fact they went from being an honorable mention in San Diego to Platinum sponsor in Paris. More importantly in the Vendor quickfire, they were third and ahead of the other Platinum sponsors. So, who is Austin McCord besides the founder of Datto? He is one person who understands the MSP industry. When Autotask merged with Datto, one of the distinct differences was that Marc C knew how to run a software company, but Austin knew how to effectively connect and meet the needs of MSP’s.
Files.com is another small vendor worth mentioning. They offer a cross cloud management program where you can access stored files from One Drive, G Drive, Dropbox, etc. without downloading/uploading. For me, the constant downloading and uploading is a pain, not to mention the multiple copies that then need to be managed. I find that the links giving access to read or edit files is not dependable, and just pushes the pain of downloading/uploading to the recipient – unless of course you find the online editing to be better than the apps.
One thing that is exciting about DattoCon is the number of Datto competitors that are there hawking their wares. Competitors such as ConnectWise (personally ConnectWise Sales is the best quoting tool in the business), Ninja, DataCore, LogicMonitor, and Pulseway, etc.
Datto touts an open environment, and their conference is one example of it. They may offer the best conferences for an MSP to attend (note, I am not paid to say this nor have been offered a keynote presentation.)
Here are some other New-To-Me Vendors:
Category: Offce365 automation management from licensing thru billing
- Appliatelink: Automating tedious processes.
- Goolash: Optimizing your managed service processes. Hey, wait a minute, that is what we do!!! Further investigation reveals it is limited to Off365 licensing (for making sure the Techs know what to work on next, we can help).
- Resello: A Cloud Native distributor and MS CSP indirect provider – in other words, Pax8 and CSPboss competitors.
- SpinPanel: Cloud automation platform – in other words, Pax8 and CSPboss competitors.
- Ydentic: Pushes cloud-based management to the MSP’s Customer, relieving the MSP from managing their Customers’ cloud inventory.
Category: Password management
- BeachHead Solutions: Remote enforcement of encryption and security.
Category: Odds and Ends
- DataCore: Software defined Storage.
- Keepabl’s: Privacy as a service on GDPR compliance.
- Uptime Solutions: Outsourced NOC, SOC, Help Desk and Project services.
- Wildix: First web based UoIP PBX UC&C system.
Category: Security (but of course)
- inSOC: 24-hour detection platform and vulnerability scanner with monitoring services.
- The Email Laundry: (looks like it was formally Soap) offers email protection.
No DattoCon Vendor Report is complete without…
...commenting on the Keynote speaker Robin Robin’s booth! The Technology Marketing Toolkit is a powerhouse in the industry, touting 539 peer group members and 1,700 current Customers for her wide range of products.
Oh, and she name-dropped Robert Herjavec as one of those customers, mentioning 8,000 past Customers and many raving fans with proof that her marketing suggestions actually work. Proof that many of us drool over.
[Note: The remaining 18 vendors are very well-known, like IT Glue and Webroot, so they are not included here.]
Author: An experienced IT Managed Service Provider Service Delivery Optimization Consultant, Stephen D. Buyze [shown in photo above] is the founder of SDB-Consulting who teach IT Managed Service Providers how to improve the quality of work-life for their employees, increase customer satisfaction, and boost profits, by providing best-in-class Service Delivery improvement online courses, downloadable educational information, and one-on-one instruction.
Steve brings his extensive education, experience and intuitive abilities to assist IT MSPs with accomplishing their goals of happier customers, more satisfied (and productive) employees, and increased profit margins.
