UK MSPs can learn from mistakes of US counterparts, says ConnectWise

International president David Bellini forecasts UK will generate a fifth of sales by 2018 and claims MSPs here have an advantage over US players, who are six months ahead

ConnectWise has predicted that the UK will account for a fifth of sales within three years and says UK MSPs are learning from the mistakes of their US counterparts.

The US-based business management platform vendor, which competes with the likes of Kaseya and Autotask, launched a UK office near Liverpool Street a year ago as part of an international expansion drive.

The firm has already accumulated about 700 MSPs here, ConnectWise international president David Bellini said, adding that he expects the UK to generate 20 per cent of sales by 2018, up from eight per cent today.

Bellini rebuffed suggestions that the UK MSP market is lagging years behind the US.

"They're not that far ahead," he said.

"People in the States are maybe a little more cavaliering, and they'll take their chances - but they're not necessarily good chances. Here, it's maybe six months behind. I see both markets day in day out and I think the UK has the benefit of looking at the States and figuring out which experiments went well and which went badly. They are in a great position."

Bellini said ConnectWise, which offers a suite of products for MSPs covering areas such as remote management and monitoring (RMM), professional services integration (PSA) remote control and quoting, is on a mission to help MSPs become more efficient.

"All of these are in one suite and that makes the MSPs' lives a bit easier," he said.

"That is the name of the game for MSPs," he added. "Costs are being pushed down. The biggest expense for MSPs is payroll dollars. Each system engineer or support staff member has to support twice as many devices as they did five years ago to stay profitable so they have to become more efficient."

ConnectWise recently built a new module into its ConnectWise PSA product aimed at MSPs that have moved into reselling Office365, which Bellini said 700 partners worldwide are already using.

ConnectWise may count Kaseya as a key competitor on the RMM side, but the duo would have worked together if ConnectWise had got its way, Bellini revealed.

"We started in 2003 and Kaseya was just starting out at the same time as us," he said.

"We were trying to build with Kaseya initially but we just couldn't get mind share with their [former] CEO, Gerald Blackie; we couldn't get him to make the integration between our ConnectWise PSA product snug with his Kaseya RMM product, so we ended up buying Labtech and built that into our own suite back in 2010."

The UK is ConnectWise's fastest-growing territory, Bellini said.

"Since it's the largest growth area for us, it's getting the most attention for us in terms of dollars and resources and you will see our office expand quickly over here as it is such a hotbed for MSPs," he said.