When Zenith Infotech first approached us back in 2004 and said they wanted to get introduced to the MSPAlliance community, I was intrigued. At the time, there were only the "big three" vendors (N-able, SilverBack, and Oculan). Midway through 2004 Oculan shut down its business and it seemed very good timing for Zenith to step into the vacuum left by Oculan's absence. Zenith and MSPAlliance embarked on a global tour to educate MSPs and I'm happy to say that I learned quite a bit during that two year period when Zenith was taking the managed services marketplace by storm.
The technicians loved the software. In fact, they raved about it. From there, word quickly spread and soon everyone was talking about Zenith. It became apparent, however, that Zenith had its eyes set not just on the software but on the services as well. Maybe because these early adopters were smaller MSP organizations, Zenith decided to offer more and more NOC solutions to its partner base. While this was a great offering for some MSPs, others chose to make a distinction between buying software from a company and outsourcing part of the IT function to the same organization.
Today, Zenith RMM was officially created and separated from Zenith Infotech and my initial thoughts are that this was a very good idea. To me, it's a much cleaner approach to the MSP community at large. There should be less confusion about what the software and services divisions are doing, and it gives both companies the ability to innovate without having to be hampered by the "conflict of interest" of being attached to the other. Zenith RMM has also received a sizable infusion of capital from Summit Partners, who will also take positions on the board.
Zenith has always been a powerhouse company. They innovate, they listen to their partners, and their products evolve in great part due to the feedback from their MSPs. As long as they continue to listen to the partners, my guess is both Zenith companies will prosper into the future.
