Autotask CEO Pushing International Expansion, Community Collaboration

Mark Cattini has been Autotask's CEO for about nine months during which time the company pledged to deliver more value to its MSP partners while also announcing some big international expansion plans.

The PSA vendor recently also experienced some turmoil surrounding its popular Community initiative, but Cattini said in an interview with CRN that Autotask is going full speed ahead into 2012. The following are excerpts from the conversation:

Autotask has made several international announcements over the last couple weeks. Can you detail them and explain what they mean to Autotask?

I think we have really significant asset, which is Autotask itself. We are primarily sold in the U.S. and been really just opportunistic internationally. We've sold to English speaking countries. We never thought of translations or building internationally. We did some research and it became obvious very quickly that we had a real significant opportunity internationally. The world is moving toward an MSP mentality as it has done in the U.S. We've sold in 54 countries but in some we've had only a few customers. The way we look at it, we have quadrupled our market opportunity. We're in with a fully localized product, with people on the ground. I think we can build a significant market position pretty quickly.

Is there any competition in Europe from locally-developed PSA platforms or is it really a green field for you there.

It's green field for the most part. We've seen a few local solutions, some partial help desk solutions, homegrown CRM solutions. But an integrated system that's purpose built and addressed [as much functionality as Autotask]? There's nothing close. I'll give you an example: when Pat Burns, who heads up product management, went to Germany, he asked someone what they need, what specific needs you have. It was incredible. Pat said he described Autotask as a product. [The MSP] had no clue such a technology existed. If you think about a market of our size, you're only likely to get piece of software this big from probably three countries: the U.S., maybe the U.K., maybe Germany.

So you haven't seen any presence from ConnectWise or TigerPaw or any other competition from the U.S.?

As far as competition, I don' t think about them that much. I just want to build a global business. The proof point is we've done business in multiple geographies and at a rate that's accelerated. We're growing 120 percent year on year and that's without international versions.

We announced [the U.K.] office in April. We're starting with seven people on the ground: sales support, implementation, and we have a very experienced guy running our international business. He's done this with two other companies. We expect 15 people by the end of the year.

We also announced last week, a fully translated version by the end of the year, maybe creeping into January, for Germany. That's where we're at today. In addition, we are developing Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French and Italian versions. German and China should be ready by December. The others a few weeks later than that. In addition to that, we're building operations in China and Australia.

NEXT: Autotask's Community Changes

Aside from language translations, what other differences are there in Europe compared to the U.S.?

They're not multi-currency, so there's no issue there. They have to have some specific accounting packages, like Sage in the U.K. and another in Germany. It's really primarily that. Germany is probably the second largest MSP geography in the world. We were in Hanover on Tuesday and got to speak with MSPs. They're really moving to managed services. The U.K. is already there. The thing that's interesting in European countries in general is that more economies are driven by small businesses compared to the U.S. As a percentage of MSPs, they're much higher than the population. The available market in Germany is not far behind in the U.S. in our opinion.

China will be somewhat experimental for us. We have a development operation in China. We've done preparation there. We put sales and marketing opportunities where our development operation is in Beijing. The landscape there is much bigger. We can have MSPs there with 400 technicians. While there's lots of one-or two-man guys in the U.S., there they are eight, 10, 50 or above.

Do you have any U.S.-based MSPs that also have international customers and will your international expansion be able to help them?

Some of the franchise businesses typically might have some overseas operations but most indepdent guys from New York or California typically does business within their own walls. That offers us the possibility to think that through.

You've had some changes in Community recently, with Jay McBain resigning and Len DiCostanzo being appointed to lead that charge. What should MSPs expect from Community going forward?

I'm very pleased with the appointment of Len. Interestingly enough, he was just in the U.K. and a lot of people knew him. He knows the industry. He knows the product inside and out. He's been there for a while. Len believes that communities are not about one person. Our view is that Len will spearhead and strategize and think and own Community, but we all will be involved in Community. What we do as a business is team focused. We're collaboratively focused. All we need is a seat at the table. We need to be involved in every aspect.

Community is our customers, our own people, vendors, distributors, With Len's credibility running an MSP, it's a great move for us. We ran our first CommunityLive event in Cincinnati on [Sept. 13] and looking at the feedback and e-mails that was a big hit. And we have 14 more [events] to go. We're serious about Community. Len's off to a flying start. Len will be there and own it. We want all our management as connected as possible. One thing that has changed, my sense is we will be careful about what inputs we take. My sense is and our customers felt we were a little narrow in where we got input from. We will have many more people customer facing.

Next: What's Next For Autotask?

There was a blog recently, an open letter to Autotask, that made the rounds and called out management for not being as clear in communicating to partners. To any partner who feels that way, what would you like to say in terms of where Autotask is headed.

We have well over 4,000 customers. That's one person. I get an awful lot of feedback about the way we have improved with customers. One thing Bruce [McEwing, director of marketing] has done is communicate what's relevant. One thing we heard is we over-communicate. I took that seriously. We've really addressed that. That's one person's' opinion and he's certainly entitled to that opinion. But in terms of the Community and where are [we] now that Jay has moved down, we answered that and put as good a Community person in place as you can get.

Everyone knows the guy [DiCostanzo] and everyone respects him. I'm scratching my head why I didn't put him in there in the first place. He's the one regret I have. He's absolutely outstanding. That individual will see that. We know him. He's a great guy. In fact, he's presenting for us [at a Community Live event in Toronto].

In terms of our philosophy of where we think the business is right now, I like the term service intelligence platform. That's what we do. Let's focus on what we're good at. We're good at this. We want to be better. We've talked about being open. That means a couple things. We're open at the front end. In the last release, 90-plus percent of our product is multi-browser. We're a SaaS company. That's our value. Now we're multi browser, across IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome. That was critical.

We also had a significant release of mobile, across multi devices: Droid, iPhone and obviously iPad, which was critical. From a browser perspective, from an API perspective, we have more than 100 people developing the platform. That's the core philosophy.

A significant release is live reports, workflow enhancements. We've reprioritized a lot of development here. We've made big shifts to improve automation and workflow. We have almost a monto0ring technology that we've called Daily Alerts to look for anomolies in your business. That went to production just a couple weeks ago. You'll see us working on other key other modules as well. That's where our focus is.