Datto CEO Austin McChord vowed to accelerate the pace of PSA (professional services automation) innovation during his DattoCon18 keynote this morning. Plus, he unveiled sweeping product enhancements across the company's MSP-focused business continuity, business management (Autotask), networking, and file sync and share portfolio.
Among the milestones Datto shared just before McChord took the stage: The company since the start of 2018 has...
- Attracted more than 1,900 new MSP partners, bringing Datto’s total partner base to more than 14,000 companies.
- Datto's MSPs serving more than 500,000 small and medium sized businesses in 132 countries. Those partners protecting 440+ petabytes of data.
- Datto has garnered 30 percent growth in recurring revenue year over year, though we're checking to see how Autotask's revenues are reflected in those figures.
Datto CEO Austin McChord: DattoCon18 Keynote Highlights
Within McChord's keynote, he highlighted three core priorities:
- Open Products: Datto's focus involves an open and broad product portfolio built exclusively for MSPs.
- Pure MSP Focus: "Datto is obsessive about MSPs. Every single department cares about MSPs and thinks about MSPs all day."
- Aggressive Innovation: Datto has to ship groundbreaking technology across Continuity, Business Management, Networking, File Sync and Share.
With those efforts in mind, Datto has built the world's first data center that's designed exclusively for MSPs, he says. He didn't mention the particular location or if it's a co-location center or purely Datto owned, etc. We'll check on that later today.
New Datto products and services
The highlights from McChord include...
1. For business continuity...
- New Feature - Rapid Rollback: If a software patch or Windows Update destroys a customer system, Datto has launched Rapid Rollback to fix the system, he says.
- New Feature: Advanced Backup Verification: A file integrity check and more plus a quick sweep for ransomware and more.
2. For business management
- Autotask: Datto has completely rebuilt its integration with Autotask PSA along with new ticketing features.
- Autotask RMM rebranded as Datto RMM. It remains pure SaaS with four-nines availability. More than 2.5 million devices are under management.
- Datto RMM 6.0: Watch for improved reporting, along with universal antivirus protection. "Datto will treat every antivirus vendor the same rather than RMM defining which AV to choose. Version 6.0 is currently in beta and slated for availability in in July.
- Autotask PSA - New Hires: Updates surfacing now, it's "built to be open" and will continue to work with third-party RMMs. "But I'm not happy with the rate of innovation, and we will deliver on a minimum of four releases per year, and we are hiring engineers" to deliver on that innovation goal, he says.
- Autotask PSA Version 2018.1: He described a number of line of business improvements and workflow enhancements.
- Autotask PSA for Apple iOS: A native iOS mobile offering for PSA dashboards is on the way...
3. For networking
- "Networking today isn't built for MSPs... vendors are shipping commodity hardware or enterprise offerings." There's nothing purpose-built for MSPs and multi-tenant management.
- "We will bring the best of commodity and enterprise together" without the complexity and headaches, he asserts.
- "We are the only vendor in networking that wakes up each day and asks 'What do MSPs need?'"
- New Hardware: Datto is introducing new access points and switches -- including an E Series switching line.
- New Management: New "switch pages" makes management easier.
- Datto Networking Appliance: It was 1.0 about 18 months ago. "This will be the most MSP-centric UTM firewall ever built."
- Quality: New lifetime warranty on all access points, switches and managed power strips."
- Datto Networking Mobile App: "It brings network management to the palm of your hand."
4. For file sync and sharing
- Workplace 2018.2, Endpoint Backup 2018.2 and Datto Drive are the company's three core products. And Datto remains committed to them.
- The challenge: "Our products are really great but so are everyone else's. So how can we stand out?"
- The answer: "A technological breakthrough solution" he says, called Direct-to-Cloud. No appliance required. Ask Datto for technical details. Senior Software Engineer Stuart Mark is the person behind most of the effort.
Keep checking back for more thoughts from McChord, and ChannelE2E's perspectives.
McChord Interview
We're sitting down with McChord for an interview later today. Stay tuned for that as well.
