Cybersecurity software company Avast sold its RMM platform, Managed Workplace, to Barracuda Networks. Barracuda, a notable data backup and security technology company, will now add a full remote monitoring and management solution to its portfolio of tools, which include security and data backup solutions.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but this marks the 2nd sale of the RMM platform, the original sale was from Level Platforms to AVG (in 2013). Avast acquired a majority stake in AVG in 2016. As part of the deal, Barracuda will continue to deliver Avast security solutions to Managed Workplace MSPs.
Once a dominant RMM software platform for MSPs, Managed Workplace had been quite competitive in the MSP profession, the AVG and Avast acquisitions seem to have lessened the importance of the MSP software compared to the security offerings of both companies.
What's Next for Managed Workplace?
If I had to take a guess, Managed Workplace is going to be supercharged and aggressively marketed to the MSP community in 2019 and beyond. Here's why.
After the Level Platforms sale to AVG, there was a lot of IT channel chatter about how AVG was going to fuse the RMM platform with security technology. At the time, this was very forward-thinking and anticipated the growing interest in security we see today.
Rather than speculate on why the RMM platform never took off, suffice it to say that neither AVG nor Avast could figure out how to market and sell Managed Workplace to MSPs. Barracuda should be a different story.
Barracuda is owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which owns several technology companies who target MSPs. Specifically, Thoma Bravo owns SolarWinds and Continuum. Now, with Barracuda and Managed Workplace, there will be three RMM platforms owned by a single private equity firm. This acquisition did not take place by accident; there was a purpose behind buying yet another RMM technology (more on that later).
Barracuda already owns several MSP specific backup and storage companies, so it understands how to sell to MSPs. I think we can expect significant investment in Managed Workplace to make it current with the rest of the RMM platforms, and we should all expect aggressive marketing and outreach to both existing Managed Workplace MSPs, as well as new MSPs not currently working with Barracuda.
Keep watching these guys. I predict big things will be happening this year!
