ConnectWise Has Lots of Friends in Security. It Wants Even Better Ones.
The company integrates with many security solutions but is going extra deep with a select few. Plus: N-able’s big plans for resellers and why now’s the time to start planning for your exit—from life.
Apologies in advance for the shameless self-congratulation, but I’ve just got to say it: You really need to read Channelholic—closely—if you want to know what’s going to happen in IT before it happens.
And I mean well before, as in 10 months before, in at least this one case, because it’s been that long since my first interview with then brand-new ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo. Augmenting the company’s security offerings, Rivelo said at the time, was a “massive opportunity” and top priority. Augment how, I asked?
“Email protection, as an example, is very important and we could probably do more there,” Rivelo replied, citing “phishing protection” as another possibility.
Sure enough, late last month came word of a new solution named ConnectWise Email Security and Security Awareness Training with Proofpoint that on its own is interesting and in context tells us a lot about where ConnectWise is headed in security and possibly beyond.
That destination has been clear in broad strokes since at least last fall’s IT Nation Connect conference in Orlando, where Rivelo shared his conviction that MSPs serious about growth and efficiency need tightly integrated platforms, and that “a platform is not a platform unless it has an open ecosystem.”
Which is to say that while it believes every bit as much in the power of platforms as arch-rival Kaseya, ConnectWise intends to mix solutions it builds or sometimes buys with solutions from partners in the platform it’s constructing atop Asio, the platform-as-a-service foundation layer for everything the company plans to do going forward.
Strictly speaking, there’s nothing new about this. ConnectWise has been integrating with solutions from a wide range of outside vendors for many years and has no intention of stopping, even in email security and awareness training.
“Choice is a good thing,” says Russ Humphries (pictured), who became EVP of product management for data protection and cybersecurity at ConnectWise in April. “We, as you well know, support any number of third-party vendors, and that’s not going to change.”
But that Proofpoint-based email and security solution exemplifies a new effort to go well beyond run-of-the-mill integrations with a small set of especially strategic partners in especially strategic product categories, so far beyond in fact that “Proofpoint” is right there in the product’s name.
“Doing a deep integration to 100 products is always going to be a bit of a challenge, so we’re certainly going to start looking at how we integrate a selection of vendors deeply into the platform,” Humphries says.
The vendors in question will have capabilities ConnectWise can’t easily replicate on its own. “When I think about Proofpoint, for example, they’re a company who invested hundreds of millions of dollars in their development,” Humphries says, adding that the result is a solution that provides unusually large volumes of particularly good telemetry.
“The approach here is to get quality signals,” he adds. “The signal-to-noise ratio is key when you’re trying to figure out what is a true positive or a false negative.”
Get the positives and negatives right, he continues, and with the assistance of a little hyperautomation (another ongoing priority at ConnectWise) you can help MSPs do more work with existing staff. “I could increase the ratio of 100, 200, 300, whatever it may be, endpoints per capita,” Humphries says.
Now in theory, you could do that with a security-specific platform of the kind Acronis, SonicWall, Sophos, and many vendors are building these days. Doing it with a platform that also includes RMM, PSA, and other managed services tools though, ConnectWise argues, offers unique advantages to MSPs, whose responsibilities extend beyond security to endpoint management, SaaS management, networking, and more.
“All of that is part of the value chain,” Humphries says. Deep integration with Proofpoint adds “connective tissue to the value chain.”
There’s more such tissue coming. “Part of my vision is to bring into the portfolio and expand the portfolio with industry-high-quality solutions,” Humphries says.
He’s already done so, in fact, in the SIEM solution ConnectWise introduced in June. You’d never know it from anything ConnectWise or anyone else has said about that product, but it runs on software from AI-powered security vendor Elastic.
“That’s an instance where we’re integrating that technology into our own platform, adding value, reducing complexity, and frankly, allowing us to provide cost-efficacy benefits to the MSP,” Humphries says.
Where else might ConnectWise go deep with a security partner rather than build or buy? “It will be viewed case by case,” is all Humphries will say for the moment. But I’ll note in closing that when Rivelo pointed to email security and phishing protection as potential platform expansions 10 months ago, he also pointed to SASE and web access management.
File under “f” for FWIW
I didn’t get into the topic with Humphries, so I can only speculate on the matter, but it seems less than coincidental that ConnectWise, which is a Thoma Bravo portfolio holding, chose to go deep in email security with Proofpoint, which is also a Thoma Bravo portfolio holding, and to put its security strategy in the hands of Humphries, who was previously a senior executive at Sophos, which is also a Thoma Bravo portfolio holding.
N-able’s roadmap to $1 billion in ARR includes a big push into resale
Last week’s post quoted John Pagliuca, president and CEO of N-able, on the growth of mega MSPs and its implications for smaller competitors. I actually got into three other topics with him during the interview that produced those quotes that I’m finally sharing now:
1. Why reselling N-able software into corporate IT is a major potential growth lever. Rania Succar, Kaseya’s new CEO, mentioned during a podcast interview recorded at The 20’s Vision conference last month that turning inbound leads from IT departments into co-sell opportunities with MSPs is on a menu of items she’s considering to help partners drive organic growth. Turns out N-able has somewhat similar plans.
I say “somewhat” because the company isn’t, so far as I can tell, planning to attend sales meetings with partners. But it very much does plan to help MSPs add revenue by reselling its software into mid-market accounts. Indeed, during N-able’s latest Investor Day in March, Pagliuca (pictured) presented sell-through income from partners as one of the three ways (along with doubling down on cybersecurity and expanding adoption among existing users) it will use to get from this year’s estimated $518 million of ARR to an eventual $1 billion.
Partners other than MSPs, it’s worth noting, figure prominently in that initiative. “Up until now, about 85% of N-able’s revenue has been focused on only a quarter of the channel,” as in MSPs, Pagliuca told attendees at that event. The VARs in the other three quarters, he continued, represent a “massive opportunity.”
2. How N-able accommodates large and small MSPs through the same platform. During an onstage appearance at Vision, Pagliuca noted that N-able has multiple billion-dollar MSPs in its partner base these days. I’ve been thinking about something on and off again ever since that probably should have occurred to me earlier: it’s got to be hard building one product set suitable for both giant MSPs and tiny ones.
I asked Succar, of Kaseya, about the matter during our interview; her answer inspired the first few paragraphs of this piece. I didn’t get a chance to ask Pagliuca, though, until days after the Vision conference was done. Yes, he said, big companies and small companies need different things from software.
“If you’re a Fortune 1000 company, you might need the power of an Oracle or SAP type of ERP,” Pagliuca observed, “but if you’re a smaller shop, you might need a Peachtree or QuickBooks that already has some of the templates in place.”
The same applies for MSPs, he adds, and N-able’s strategy for accommodating both needs in the same product is to include a lot of customizability for the big MSPs and a lot of ready-made components for the small ones.
“We gear our technology to scale for the best in class, for those billion-dollar folks, but then through our tools and through our people, we’ll provide the training wheels and the templates so that the smaller shops can still drive their business to be effective,” Pagliuca says, noting that the company’s N-central RMM solution exemplifies that approach.
“We give folks the ability to use low-code, no-code automation to make custom features,” he says. “The big shops really like that,” he adds. “For the smaller shops, that can be a little bit overwhelming.”
Worth noting that “ecoverse” integrations with alliance partners in the vendor community are another piece of N-able’s customizability game plan, and also that ConnectWise isn’t the only vendor into connective tissue. “We’ve invested in our APIs and giving folks the ability to leverage natural language and AI to go and create this connective tissue between different tools,” Pagliuca says.
3. Disaster recovery in N-able’s cloud along with network and cloud vulnerability management are on the product roadmap. Pagliuca got applause from his audience at Vision when he announced that users of the company’s Cove BDR solution will soon be able to recover end user environments in N-able’s cloud. “If you’re a smaller shop, you don’t have to have your own cloud environment,” Pagliuca says, adding that a limited preview of that feature is coming soon.
Coming next year, meanwhile, are two extensions of the vulnerability management feature the company tacked onto its two RMM solutions, N‑central and N‑sight, in April. The first will add network scanning to the original tool’s endpoint scanning. The second will add cloud scanning. “Think something like a baby Wiz,” Pagliuca explains.
Why haven’t you read about those forthcoming releases elsewhere? N-able isn’t talking about them publicly yet. “But I’m happy for you to leak a couple of things,” Pagliuca says with a sly smile.
Bummer alert: You’re going to die
Consider this a public service announcement: you’re going to die.
No, really. You don’t want to hear about it, because no one wants to hear about it, but it’s true and I’m not the only one who’s sure of it.
“People don’t like to talk about the fact that they’re going to die, but the reality is I can almost guarantee you with 100% accuracy that it is going to happen to you,” says Arlin Sorensen, who’s less than a year away from retirement after a lifetime of service in the channel, most recently as vice president of ecosystem evangelism at ConnectWise.
How the people you care about remember you when the inevitable happens is your legacy, he continues, and whether it’s one you’re happy with or one you’re stuck with anyway depends entirely on decisions you make now. Some of them, like putting an estate plan in place, are procrastination bait.
“It’s complicated,” Sorensen says. “This is not the kind of thing that you’re going to sit down and figure out in a couple of hours.” Yet what becomes of you in your final days and what becomes of your family after that is likely to hinge on whether you named powers of attorney for your healthcare and finances, appointed legal guardians for your children, and above all drafted a will.
“The number of people that do not have any kind of a will is staggering to me,” Sorensen says.
Just the same, he warns, it would be a mistake to think your legacy’s secure once you close that gap. Like it or not, you’ll be building a legacy for the rest of your life.
“How we live every day is what’s going to determine that legacy that we’re going to leave, and that will outlive us,” Sorensen says.
Money is only part of that picture, and Tim Conkle clearly knows it. Conkle, who is CEO of The 20, an MSP rollup and associated accelerator you’ve read about here as recently as last week, normally spends his opening day keynote at the company’s annual Vision event reviewing the group’s latest wealth-building strategies. But at age 59, he has more than just wealth on his mind these days, which is why he devoted his first appearance at this year’s conference last month to the many other topics busy IT entrepreneurs are all too apt to overlook, including their health.
“With no health, wealth means nothing,” Conkle (pictured) says, adding that wealth amounts to little without a family to enjoy it with too.
“There is nothing worse than being successful by yourself,” Conkle observes.
Don’t worry. Conkle had plenty to say about building wealth. His second keynote did the math on how MSPs who sell to The 20 now, reinvest 40%, and are still at the table when the company sells to upstream investors can turn an initial $1 million payday into $5.32 million within eight years. The lesson he most wanted his audience to learn though, I think, had more to do with making time for life than making money, lest you find yourself on your deathbed with a lot of cash and even more regrets.
“You will spend every single penny, every penny you have, for one more minute,” Conkle predicts. “Wouldn’t it be a whole lot better to spend it while you’re healthy?”
The view from venture
You probably have a pretty good sense for what the managed services market looks like right now to MSPs, and to vendors as well. How about venture capital investors? Let Joel Abramson and Mark Scott of Top Down Ventures tell you all about it in the latest episode of MSP Chat, the podcast I co-host.
Also worth noting
Sophos has fully integrated its endpoint protection solution into all of the Taegis MDR and XDR subscriptions it acquired along with Secureworks in February.
Check Point’s new Enterprise Browser enables organizations to extend zero-trust security and policy enforcement to unmanaged devices.
Veeam has introduced a fully pre-configured software appliance for users who want to run its software without hardware lock-in.
Microsoft’s new Defender and Purview suites for M365 Business Premium subscribers are $10 a user per month separately and $15 a user per month together.
Auvik’s latest product updates include Smart Alert Suppression for its network management system and a streamlined client dashboard for its SaaS management tool.
Addigy now offers anyone responsible for Apple endpoints an integrated security suite that includes SentinelOne’s MDR and EDR solutions.
Speaking of SentinelOne, they’re now offering a “Managed AI Defense” solution through Pax8.
Keeper Security has integrated its privileged access management platform with CrowdStrike’s Falcon Next-Gen SIEM.
Cato Networks has acquired Aim Security in a move to add enhanced AI security and governance features to its SASE solution.
Evergreen Services Group has added Sage solution provider Equation Technologies and three leading Canadian MSPs to its growing list of acquisitions.
Brian Martin is the new CEO at Channelscaler.
Frank DeCicco is the new head of Americas channel at Netwrix. Stuart Robson-Frisby is the new VP of worldwide channel.
Chris Ogburn, Sam Sundstrom, and Staci Corbett are all now part of the Channel Marketing Association’s board of directors.