For those of you who are not aware, MSP management and help desk software company Autotask announced this week it has acquired RMM company CentraStage. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but additional details about the acquisition are available on Autotask's website.
Analysis and Impact on MSPs
Since Mark Cattini took over as CEO for Autotask, the company has been headed towards a direction, I thought, of being sold to either an investment group or to another technology vendor. I had a long list of likely candidates but I must confess I did not see Autotask being the buyer of another company, much less an RMM vendor. Why did they do it?
Autotask's CEO said the purchase was made to enhance the value to Customers and add technical capabilities. “Our goal is always to provide exceptional value to our customers by improving the technical aspects of their operations and empowering them to make fact-based decisions to achieve business objectives,” said Mark Cattini, President and CEO of Autotask. “CentraStage shares our vision of providing a superior customer experience, demonstrated by their exceptional satisfaction and retention rates. The unique value of our combined businesses will provide customers improved ROI and real-time visibility across their clients’ entire computing environment.”
What is clearly happening is the lower end of the MSP market is being dominated by a handlful of technology vendors who are desparately attempting to buy their way towards a goal of owing and delivering all the major compoenents of SMB managed services: remote monitoring & management and PSA (or help desk and trouble ticketing).
It started when PSA company ConnectWise invested in RMM technology called LabTech. Now Autotask has its own RMM. But what do these moves mean for the SMB focused MSP?
At first glance it makes perfect sense for these vendors to behave this way. Regardless of statements by both companies that they won't play favorites or discourage use of competitive software, it is hard to believe that ConnectWise doesn't want its users to be also using LabTech; the same is now true of Autotask wanting its users to ultimately use CentraStage. Even if their marketing says otherwise, the technology roadmap and integration will likely tell a different story as these companies become more closely integrated over time.
Lines Have Been Drawn
After analyzing the vendor landscape in light of this recent acquisition, it is clear to me that a line has been drawn for MSPs. The line is not one drawn by any coordinated effort by either Autotask or ConnectWise, but it is a line nevertheless. I speak of the MSP who is servicing predominantly customers of under 100 users. These MSPs, including new entrants to the MSP market who also service this size customer base, will increasingly find these "Swiss Army Knife" enabling vendors very appealing. After all, this is what many MSPs have been longing for since before managed services became popular. Tight integration between the RMM and PSA technologies has been a very important element to the efficiency and profitability of MSPs.
