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Kaseya Upgrades RMM for MSPs: What’s In VSA 9.3

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Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola
Fred Voccola

Kaseya has launched VSA 9.3, an upgrade to the company's remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform for MSPs. The upgrade includes a range of enhancements -- particularly on the security front. It may also signal a more predictable cadence of upgrades and enhancements from Kaseya, which has worked hard over the past eight months or so to bolster its R&D, sales and support services for MSPs.

According to Kaseya, VSA 9.3 "delivers a reimagined technician experience to greatly improve productivity, enable 24x7 operations, provide policy-driven end-point security and increased platform scalability and extensibility."

Key capabilities, according to the company, include:

  • Real Time Visibility: A Live Connect module tracks CPU utilization, application processes, services, disk utilization, activity metrics and service tickets-without interrupting the end user’s system, Kaseya said.
  • Fast Remote Control: VSA’s remote control is accessible within Live Connect to help MSPs more rapidly resolve device problems. Many rivals, by the way, are also integrating remote control into their products.
  • Integration with Intel vPro to help bolster remote support and reduce site visits.
  • Extensible Automation: "Technicians can leverage an extensible library of automated procedures to address common issues, such as rebooting, disk cleanup, service restarts, or clearing registry problems," Kaseya said.
  • Other enhancements allow MSPs to multitask more effectively while also delivering a better user interface.

On the security front, Kaseya says VSA 9.3 offers “best practice” automation templates; selectable security posture levels; and customized security policies. The company apparently has been working closely with Kaspersky Lab and Malwarebytes, in particular, to offer behavioral based and network attack detection.

Overall, Kaseya claims VSA 9.3 boosts performance by 30 percent due to a range of design enhancements. And there are new bi-directional PSA integrations for Autotask, ConnectWise and Tigerpaw Software, the company said.

Kaseya: The Bigger Picture

Granted, a lot of the info above is taken directly from Kaseya's press release.

My spin on the situation: Kaseya is delivering VSA 9.3 during Kaseya Connect 2016, which kicks off this week in California. That's a subtle but important point. During previous Kaseya Connect conferences, the company often made grand statements about future software upgrades -- and then those upgrades would take several quarters and perhaps even years to arrive. In stark contrast, Kaseya actually delivered what seems to be a pretty major upgrade in time for this year's conference.

Assuming the platform works as advertised, VSA 9.3 is an important milestone for CEO Fred Voccola and the Kaseya management team. After some missteps on the software and customer fronts, Kaseya hired Voccola in mid-2015 to stabilize the business and strengthen a range of areas -- particularly R&D delivery and customer support.

Third-Party PSA, Kaseya Business Management Solution (BMS)

On the PSA-RMM front, it's good to see bi-directional integration with third-party offerings. But I was surprised to see the VSA 9.3 press release had no mention of Kaseya Business Management Solution (BMS) -- a PSA offering based on Kaseya's buyout of Vorex in 2015.

Still, I suspect Kaseya may discuss the state of BMS and other software portfolio components during the conference... We're poking around for more potential details on that front.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.