Kaseya APAC GM on how MSPs can take advantage of businesses cutting costs

Daniel Garcia speaks to CRN Australia about how MSPs could take advantage of the economic climate.

As SMBs and mid-market organisations look to cut costs in their businesses, MSPs should jump on this opportunity, according to Daniel Garcia, vice president and general manager – APAC at Kaseya.

Speaking to CRN Australia exclusively, Garcia said that SMBs cutting costs will look to MSPs to provide their in-house IT services.

“SMBs or mid-market organisations are looking to cut costs in their organisations, they're looking to MSPs from when they typically have in-sourced IT people, [they’re looking to] MSPs now to deliver the IT services for that organisation,” he explained.

Garcia said most MSPs are used to managing a company with one to 50 seats, but that range is “creeping up”.

“Organisations with up to 200 [seats] might not even have an internal IT person anymore and are looking for more MSPs to deliver those services,” he argued.

“Even larger organisations are looking about how they can partner with an MSP. Still maybe have internal IT but have a co-managed situation where they have MSPs delivering specific services, whether it be help desk or managing the cloud environments.”

Garcia explained with organisations cutting costs, it will give MSPs an opportunity to get more customers. He said MSPs deliver technology solutions in an “efficient way”.

“They can do it at scale. It's hard for internal IT people to keep up with all the latest technologies, all the latest security vulnerabilities when they're just focusing on one organisation,” Garcia said.

“The ability to deliver those services at scale is where customers of MSPs will win.”

Profitability problem

While MSPs may be at an advantage, Garcia points out that profitability is still a pain point for managed service providers.

He said it is the “number one problem” they see across their 65,000 customers.

“It came up in a recent report, an MSP industry report that we did, 91 percent of our MSP partners still say profitability is the number one concern.

“If you're doing an average of 10 percent [profit] if you lose a top customer or two, you're probably going to be in real strife. You're going to be battling just to stay out of red,” he explained.

“Helping organisations move from 10 to 20 to 30 percent profit is absolutely what we're trying to do here at Kaseya, the biggest challenge I see.”

Other challenges Garcia has identified with MSPs is around tasks they “have to do” and not getting additional revenue.

“Looking after a more breadth of technology, now tasked to manage all the security as well for an organisation,” he said.

“We have a lot of compliance standards here in Australia and throughout Asia, MSPs are sort of burdened to update the customers about what that means for them and how they deliver those solutions.”

Garcia on Voccola stepping down

CRN Australia also asked Garcia about who will replace the global CEO, after Fred Voccola stepped down abruptly in January.

While he couldn’t provide an answer, he did say when he heard the news about Voccola stepping down in a last minute pre-brief, he was “shocked”.

“[Voccola] was one of the big reasons why I came on board, and again still super happy that he's around. A little bit shocked, I think it was the right time,” he said.

“There's no secret that this organisation wants to be publicly listed. I think he saw it as an opportunity, after launching Kaseya 365, that it's a good time to step down and for someone to come on board and to take it to the next level.”