N-able Gets Multimillion-Dollar Equity Infusion To Spur Growth

"This is a game-changing opportunity for N-able. It puts us in a position to accelerate our plan and invest more in partners on how we help them really grow their businesses and help them deliver more managed services to their end users," Garbutt said.

Since Jan. 2010, N-able has grown its SMB customer base around 175 percent, but more capital will allow it to accelerate that growth and bring more opportunities and improved functionality to customers, Garbutt said.

"We'll invest in little things like our partner development specialist teams, working to help partners' go-to-market strategies. We're doubling that team. On the product development side, we will increase resources in that area, such as tech support desk," Garbutt said.

The capital will also help N-able fuel more international growth, Garbutt said.

"Now, 40 percent of our [revenue] comes from outside North America. We will continue to expand in new geographies," he said.

In North America, N-able plans some aggressive programs to help MSPs expand their managed services offerings to end users. Some of the plans will be detailed next week at N-able's annual partner summit in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"The goal is to get all the data on the dashboard and help [MSPs] provide intelligence reports to align IT with business goals and objectives," Garbutt said. "The idea is whoever owns the data, owns the customers. We will make sure we provide partners with tools to be able to do that."

The managed services market, particularly in the SMB market, is reaching the early part of the mass adoption period, past the early-adopter phase, Garbutt said. As a result, N-able felt it was necessary to have the resources necessary to handle what it expects to be a busy next couple of years.

"That's thanks to new technology, new programs, the fact that the SMB market is becoming educated that it's a service that's available, and the complexity of networks and IT lends itself to the [managed services] model," Garbutt said.

N-able's board considered several options to raise capital, including an IPO, but ultimately felt that a private equity investment (Accel-KKR gets two seats on the board but N-able executives retain control) was the right choice for the company.

"The folks at Accel-KKR really came through as far as being terrific people to work with in a partnership. They shared the same vision that we did. They want to invest in the management team and business strategy and help us really, really grow the business," Garbutt said.