It is now official; we are in the midst of the RMM wars and the beneficiaries of these battles will inevitably be the managed service providers. Remote monitoring and management (RMM) companies started back in the mid to late 1990s with the enterprise class tools like HP Open View, CA Unicenter, and a few others. These tools helped launch the managed services industry.
The small and medium sized (SMB) community, however, were left in the cold with no real solutions that were effective for managing smaller customers. When companies like N-able, SilverBack, and Oculan came on the scene, managed service providers serving SMB customers were born. These three companies, in large part, helped spark the modern day managed services movement by allowing VARs to become MSPs without the need to spend a lot of money on enterprise class tools.
Since that time, however, when each company (and their successors like Zenith Infotech, Level Platforms, Kaseya, and others) had successfully on-boarded thousands of MSPs, the innovation slowed. The RMM companies shifted their revenue more towards new MSP acquisition and then later into making existing MSPs more productive. The innovation that did come was produced largely by adding third party relationships in lieu of owning the innovation within the RMM platform.
Given the recent SolarWinds and AVG acquisitions of two major RMM players, I believe it is safe to say that the RMM wars are upon us. These acquisitions signal both the commodity vulnerabilities of the RMM technologies, but also the need for significant growth and maturity within these technology platforms.
Don't get me wrong, RMM platforms will likely remain the center of the MSP universe for a long time. RMM technologies are how MSPs live and breath. MSPs will benefit from greater integration and product roadmap development as both SolarWinds and AVG shine their recent purchases.
The recent acquisitions, however, do put significant pressure on the remaining RMM companies, as well as the potential buyers who now have two fewer RMM companies to buy. All of this does mean one thing for the MSPs: greater choice and greater innovation from their RMM candidates.
I say, let the RMM wars continue...there is plenty of room for growth.
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