Kaseya Gives MSPs Direct Option, But Will Step Up Its Own Sales

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Beginning this week, Kaseya partners will be able to sell any number of individual user licenses of the vendor's software directly to end-users, said Bill Falk, vice president of sales at Kaseya, San Francisco. Falk notes that this is the first time that partners have been able to do this, and that they will get paid residual commissions on license renewals and maintenance fees for as long as the customer pays them.

The vast majority of vendor's products, such as the Kaseya IT Framework, are used by MSPs to offer remote network automation, monitoring, and remediation. Previously, MSPs had been required to purchase minimum user license counts beginning at 100 seats for $12,000, 250 seats for $25,500, and so on, according to Kaseya January 2006 price list.

Under the new program, Kaseya partners can sell single seat licenses directly to end-users, forego providing any kind of managed service, and earn commission, said Falk.

Kaseya's own sales force will also sell the products direct, said Falk. Right now about 20 percent of Kaseya's revenue arrives from direct sales, he said.

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But the new program is designed to appease large enterprise customers who may not want an MSP but do want their own IT staff to have the Kaseya tools at their disposal, said Falk. Kaseya's direct salesmen will target these enterprise customers, and any customer with less than 100 employees who approaches Kaseya directly will be referred to partner, he said.

Still, competing against any direct sales force can be a cause for concern if you're a solution provider, said Randy Zielinski, president of Technical Business Systems, a Kaseya partner in Schenectady, N.Y. Being able to sell the Kaseya software outright is a nice option to have, said Zielinski, but the possibility of going head-to-head against a direct salesman who's trying to hit numbers at the end of a quarter is not something to look forward to.

Falk tried to address such concerns, by saying that the new program gives partners and customers more options.

"This program gives our partners another avenue to generate revenue through the use of Kaseya," said Falk. "If they approach a customer with their own IT department who isn't interested in having an MSP, they can still sell the core product."

Kaseya launched a lead-generation program in the week leading up to the launch of the new program, said Falk. The vendor will drive primarily mid-market leads out to the partners in best position to close them, and direct salespeople will be dispatched to enterprise leads, he said.

Darrin Lipscomb, president of the Avrio Group, an MSP and Kaseya partner in Salisbury, MD., said that he's not all that worried about competition from Kaseya's direct salesmen. First, there's a trust level in place between Avrio and Kaseya, because Avrio has been a close, active partner of Kaseya's for some time now. Second, Avrio is making strides in government markets that give it an advantage against Kaseya's direct salesmen in the same markets, he said.

"We haven't been able to get any kind of exclusivity from Kaseya, but we are carving out a niche in the federal markets, where Kaseya has had some success, but not like a reseller like Avrio has," said Lipscomb.