DeskFlix: Kaseya director on how MSPs have overcome COVID-19 challenges

1. What is the biggest challenge that your partners (VARs, MSPs, etc) have faced during the mass shift to remote working, and how have you helped them combat these?

MSPs are trying to stay in business, retain customers and create high value services, all while trying to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Kaseya is supporting our MSPs and partners through this time with our IT Complete solution stack. IT Complete delivers a full range of best-of-breed technologies for every IT need and our continued delivery of product innovations, in particular workflow integrations, are helping our customers continue to maximise efficiency and reduce costs.   

2. Is there a project that you've worked on over the last few months that you are particularly proud of?  

We are most proud of our Kaseya Cares programme, which we launched in March to support our customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. As our CEO Fred Voccola said: "Our customers have empowered us to build an amazing company over the last 20 years. It's our turn to give back."  

Kaseya Cares is a three-part, multi-million-dollar program that is free to our customers. It consists of:  

• Government relief navigation: We brought the full weight of our legal, financial and technological expertise to ensure our customers get all the information they need to take advantage of government relief programs.  
• Business guidance: We expanded our Powered Services programme, which provides essential sales and marketing assistance. Combined with the expertise of Gary Pica of TruMethods, our customers can receive coaching and consulting specifically designed to help them acquire, retain, and service customers effectively in this challenging business environment.  
• Direct financial assistance: We are investing millions of dollars into custom programmes to help our customers stabilise and even grow their business by ensuring they have both the tools and the capital they need to survive and thrive. Once registered, our dedicated COVID-19 response team prioritises requests and arranges calls to walk our customers through the options that make the most sense for their business needs.  

3. How has your own business had to adapt to continue meeting the demands of the channel and end-users?  

Like so many other organisations, we have been impacted by the pandemic. With our strong business continuity plan in place, we were able to quickly transition to a completely remote workforce within a couple of days and maintain the availability of our 24 x7 customer support team. Despite these dramatic shifts, our teams continue to deliver new product innovations and closely collaborate with our customers to stay informed of their changing needs.

Additionally, we created our Kaseya Cares program (see above) to provide added support and resources to our customers during this difficult time.4. What has surprised you most about your channel partners over the last two months?

 We have seen our channel partners really step up andprovide assistance to our MSPs in a way that encourages the success of MSPs. The community has come together and is working to ensure the longevity and prosperity of the MSP community by enabling them to succeed in a time where their customer base is struggling. This tight knit community shows that we are all here to help, not just vendors, but channel partners, channel influencers and MSPs alike, offering advice and support to our fellow peers.5. What do you expect to be the long-term impact of our new working from home culture, on both the channel and working culture in general

The impact of our new work from home culture will be more of a long-term play and ultimately beneficial to MSPs. With remote work now a part of the new normal, early data shows that an increasing number of businesses will continue to enable their employees to work from home for some or all of the work week.

Additionally, the likelihood of fewer in-person conferences and trade shows coupled with the continued need to meet in groups means software for remote meetings will continue to rise. This new paradigm will put MSPs in a great position to help small and medium sized businesses who will need the IT expertise of a managed service provider to remotely manage their distributed devices, install software, backup files, and keep them patched and secure.

Long-term, this is a major opportunity for MSPs to grow their customer base without having to change their normal practice areas. As our annual MSP benchmark survey EMEA report indicated, 57 per cent of our respondents consider themselves to be general purpose service providers, who will eventually be able to capitalise on this opportunity.Kaseya is a sponsor of  Episode 1 of CRN's DeskFlix series. You can register to attend the virtual event here.