Datto CEO Austin McChord is addressing roughly 1,000 MSPs during the company's DattoCon17 conference this morning in Denver. Among the major surprises: A Datto Labs R&D effort called Datto Desktops -- a new spin on VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) that's managed by Datto's cloud and associated dashboard.
Now: Five Questions MSPs Should Ask Datto
CEO Austin McChord Keynote Recap (unfolding now)
- CEO Austin McChord has taken the stage.
- The company launched 10 years ago. McChord provided a quick history of the company's R&D over the past decade. If you're an MSP you know the story. Fast forward to present day and the story has extended beyond BDR to networking and global MSP engagements.
- "We want to build solutions that are easy to deploy, manage and support" for MSPs -- thereby delivering profit opportunities for partners.
- The company, with 850 employees, protects more than 320 Petabytes of data, supports 6400 partners, and 150,000 active deployments in 198 countries.
- Product announcements: McChord is about to cover about five major product announcements. I'll share details later today rather than covering here.
- Datto has expanded its R&D and support team for BDR by more than 250 percent over the past year or so. I'll double-check the figure and timeframe when I speak with McChord later today.
- Datto will remain 100 percent sold via the MSP channel, McChord asserted.
- "Networking today looks like BDR 10 years ago," McChord asserted -- pointing to bad network management user interfaces, piecemeal solutions and multi-vendor products that weren't designed for MSPs. He drove home the need for managed networking services -- that are managed and monitored from the cloud. Stay tuned for more details later today...
- More than 330 Datto partners are selling the company's managed networking solutions, he said.
- The network gear now integrates with ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech). Integrations with Autotask and Kaseya are coming.
- Datto VDI Called "Datto Desktops": Datto is building a virtual desktop solution specifically for MSPs. An official product has not been unveiled yet, but the company is demoing some of the technology here at the conference. It involves VDI tied to Datto's cloud and management portal.
- McChord shared numerous product announcements and updates. We'll recap the news later today.
Tuesday Afternoon, June 6
- One-on-one interviews with multiple industry influencers.
- We'll share recaps here.
Wednesday, June 7
- The coverage continues here
