Kaseya acknowledges partner program ‘teething problems’, promises to hire more account managers

Kaseya has said that investing in account managers will be a focus of its global partner program for the coming year, after customers complained of a drop in service quality following the acquisition of Datto.

Launched in January, the refreshed Kaseya Global partner program allowed customers to combine their Datto and Kaseya spend together to help them move up into higher benefit tiers, a knock-on effect of the Datto acquisition roughly 6 months prior.

While many customers have been able to move up into higher tiers, there are also a sizable number of customers that have complained about the quality of their points of contact on accounts.

Some reported to the company of experiencing frustration over having multiple Kaseya staff handling accounts, rather than the consistency of one single manager who is familiar with their business.

Greg Jones, VP business development EMEA at Kaseya, told ITPro that communicating with partners on this issue has been a priority for the company since the Datto acquisition last year.

Jones said that there were initial teething problems with offering a single contact to partners, with confusion arising over whether partners should be given a representative from Datto’s business or Kaseya’s.

“Fred [Voccola] mentioned that on stage [on Monday], that it wasn't a seamless overnight transition,” said Jones. “We're talking about over 50,000 partners globally. That's a huge undertaking, in terms of alignments geographically [and whether] they sit on the Datto or the Kaseya rep side of things.

“We are pretty much there in terms of our journey. Has it been as smooth as we wanted it? Well, no. Would we have wanted it to be totally smooth and overnight? Yeah, but that's never ever going to happen. It's something that we will continue to evaluate, and something we take very, very seriously.”

Jones revealed that the company was now on a "massive" recruitment drive, adding that "if I just look my department in MSP enablement, we've just gone over 60 people there alone. To give you an idea, when we were just on the data, that was around about 15 people".

Kaseya’s partner program still yet to fully deliver

Kaseya announced a number of new features and initiatives that would form the spine of its refreshed partner program back in January, but six months on, some are yet to materialize.

The Blue Diamond Elite tier, the highest tier to ever be made available to partners, still has no set date for its launch, Jones confirmed, and the exact terms of the added benefits are yet to be finalized. However, Jones said that what’s being considered at the moment is greater support for an MSP’s sales and marketing efforts.

We did get an update on Virtual MSP partner days, which were another standout feature from the program announced in January. The company has revealed these will take the form of a three-to-four-hour session, aimed at helping partners develop their understanding of the business side of running an MSP, as well as delivering thought leadership content across areas such as mergers and acquisitions and market insights. The aim is to deliver the first of these virtual events at some point during Q4 2023.

Despite some promises still yet to materialize, Kaseya already deems the new program a success. Specifically, one of the most talked-about features of the program was the ability for Kaseya and Datto spend to be combined, allowing for MSPs to more easily advance up tiers, claiming more benefits.

Partners can also make use of the additional investment into additional resources that are available to customers. Resources added to the partner platform include new webinars, playbooks, and checklists about buying, selling, and merging managed services practices.

“We've got a huge roadmap for partners in terms of product services, but more importantly, our partner program, although we unveiled a new partner program, it's ever-evolving,” said Jones.

“We're still working on virtual MSP days, we're still working on new content in terms of what's happening in the marketplace. We're adding additional headcount across the business, whether that be from account management - and that's driven from supply and demand - we're investing more in R&D than ever before.”