Kaseya emPowers managed service providers

IT automation software vendor, Kaseya, has launched an additional service offering that aims to help its resellers provide better services and support to their customers around the clock.

Kaseya country manager, Tim Dickinson, said the US-based company was ramping up its service offering with new components, branded as Kaseya emPower Out-Tasking, Toolkit and Education, for its IT automation framework.

The services would let managed services providers (MSPs) offer continuous support over a whole range of hardware using the same software. Most 24:7 service offerings, he alleged, did not offer full service around the clock, partly because of the cost.

"Usually, it means you get somebody with a pager under their pillow," Dickinson said.

He said system integrators and similar resellers targeting improved margins through SMB services and support could find providing full around-the-clock managed service provision more profitable than break-fix services.

"If you have one appliance, for example, and charge $200 per month, you can make high margin. With Kaseya software, you can do that with every work station. You're talking about big revenue opportunities," Dickinson said.

Charging per device each month was generally more profitable than charging for a particular service, such as a visit to a customer to fix one or two problems, he said.

According to a Kaseya statement, the out-tasking component helped resellers to automate their customer monitoring, and identify potential problems quickly. It included IT Monitor Assist, which gave resellers the chance to provide 'always-on' monitoring.

Subject matter experts could assist the reseller's IT team. Kaseya's IT Monitor assistants could determine which alerts needed immediate attention and notify the reseller, Kaseya said.

In the toolkit, resellers get access to technical information, sales and marketing tools and knowledge resources, such as podcasts and video clips from other MSPs.

Dickinson said MSPs were assisted via Kaseya's global support centres in Singapore, the US and UK, covering all time zones. The vendor had 120 staff globally, but was seeking to hire more engineers in the near future, Dickinson said.

"Kaseya has been growing about 300 per cent a month," he said. The firm, which so far has deployed on around a million machines in 25 countries, was founded in 2000 and opened its Australian office a year ago, he said.

"We've got about 100 customers in Australia and NZ," Dickinson said.