Kaseya-IT Glue buyout won't sever ties with MSP software competitors
The Kaseya-IT Glue acquisition, two years in the making, will not affect the IT documentation vendor's integrations with Kaseya's competitors, according to Kaseya CEO; other channel news from the week.
By
Spencer Smith and John Moore
Published: 21 Dec 2018
IT infrastructure management vendor Kaseya revealed this week it has completed its acquisition of IT Glue, an IT documentation software company.
IT Glue, based in Vancouver, B.C., will operate under Kaseya as a stand-alone subsidiary, Kaseya said. IT Glue's management team will continue to lead the organization's day-to-day operations, while Chris Day, IT Glue's CEO, will be leaving the company. Kaseya stressed that IT Glue's integrations with Kaseya's competitors in the managed services provider (MSP) software space, including Datto and SolarWinds, will not be affected by the buyout.
"[IT Glue] glues together an MSP's usage of multiple products from different vendors. And we fully support that," said Fred Voccola, CEO of Kaseya, headquartered in Dublin and Miami, of the Kaseya-IT Glue buyout. "If we compete with Datto ... or SolarWinds, we also need to make sure that our customers can operate and integrate Datto or SolarWinds and other vendors' products along with ours."
Prior to the acquisition, Kaseya worked with IT Glue for more than three years and integrated the documentation software into its IT Complete platform for MSPs and internal IT shops. Voccola noted that the Kaseya-IT Glue acquisition was a long-term process starting about two years ago.
With the Kaseya-IT Glue purchase now complete, Voccola noted that IT Glue users shouldn't expect any disruption to the software. The only difference, he said, is IT Glue will have access to "a lot more financing."
"I think ... IT Glue customers will be very happy with the pretty substantial boost in capital that is available for R&D" under Kaseya, he said.
IT Glue provides software to more than 5,000 MSPs worldwide, according to Kaseya. Voccola said Kaseya works with between 18,000 and 20,000 MSPs worldwide.
Commvault appoints new channel chief
Commvault, a data backup and management vendor, has appointed Carmen Sorice III to the newly created position of vice president of worldwide route services.
I think ... IT Glue customers will be very happy with the pretty substantial boost in capital that is available for R&D.
Fred VoccolaCEO, Kaseya
In his new role, Sorice will oversee partner and sales enablement, partner communications, demand generation and global partner programs and operations, the vendor said. Additionally, Sorice said he will manage Commvault's "partner-ready, field-ready content creation." Commvault, based in Tinton Falls, N.J., partners with solution providers, service providers and public cloud integrators in the Americas, as well as Asia-Pacific and EMEA markets.
"The change we are starting to create here at Commvault and with our partners ... is we are looking to become partner-driven, so that the partners we have are being helped by our tools, our processes [and] our demand-gen tools to create opportunities that are incremental to their businesses," Sorice said.
"I think the next challenge we have is to show partners how they can grow their business with us," he noted. "Some partners look at data backup as an add-on to something they are doing already, whether they are selling compute or whether they are selling storage or cloud services."
Before joining Commvault, Sorice founded Qlarity LLC, a professional services company that focused on supporting partners and enterprises in digital transformation initiatives.
The patent is for a "multi-state quantum optimization engine," which aims to help organizations "identify a broader range of solutions to business challenges," according to the company. The approach Accenture has patented involves running multiple simulations simultaneously and identifying the optimal outcome to improve decision-making.
Marc Carrel-Billiard, global senior managing director of Accenture Labs, Accenture's dedicated R&D organization, said he believes quantum computing will not replace classical computing. Instead, quantum computing will function as a co-processor of sorts to a traditional computer, he noted.
Carrel-Billiard suggested businesses will access quantum computing resources in the cloud and will be allocated time slots for connecting to the quantum computer and getting results. The cloud-based access could end up resembling time-sharing on a mainframe, a common approach for processing workloads 50 years ago.
Accenture's R&D group has been working with the company's industry specialists to identify business problems quantum computing might be able to address. He said the company, thus far, has identified 150 use cases for quantum computing. Potential applications include drug discovery and supply chain optimization.
Other news
Security vendor Seceon said it updated its aiMSSP product for managed security service providers (MSSPs). New capabilities allow MSSPs to offer multi-tiered managed security service and managed detection and response services to enterprise and small and medium-sized businesses, Seceon said. Seceon added that the upgraded product aims to help service providers adopt a master MSSP business model.
InfoSec Institute, a provider of information security education and workforce security awareness offerings, is partnering with The ASCII Group to offer an MSP Toolkit. The toolkit aims to help MSPs and MSSPs build security awareness training programs for their customers. The toolkit, built on Infosec Institute's SecurityIQ platform, is available to The ASCII Group's MSP members.
Netwrix, a security and risk management company, last week introduced a partner sales certification program. Through the program, partners such as value-added resellers, MSPs and distributors can access training for the Netwrix Auditor platform. Netwrix said its authorized partners are eligible to enroll in the program via the vendor's partner portal.
Cloud distributor Pax8 promoted Nick Heddy to chief revenue officer. Heddy was previously Pax8's senior vice president of sales and marketing.
D&H Distributing, based in Harrisburg, Pa., has inked a global reseller agreement with Nimble, which provides CRM for Microsoft Office 365. D&H partners can provision Nimble CRM with Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure, directly from the distributor's online cloud marketplace, according to the company.
Avant Communications, a master agent and channel sales enablement company based in Chicago, has entered an alliance with Logicworks, which specializes in cloud migration and management. The partnering news follows a similar Avant arrangement with Alert Logic, a threat management vendor. Avant's network of trusted advisers resells products in the master agent's alliance portfolio.
Liongard added a Metrics feature to its Roar automation platform for MSPs. Metrics offers Roar users "the counts and lists that are critical to the MSP daily operations such as billing review," according to the company.
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