IT management, MSP

Canalys RMM, PSA Leadership Matrix: NinjaOne, HaloPSA Have ‘A Lot of Momentum’

Who are the top vendors in the MSP tools platform market? ConnectWise, Kaseya, and N-able are the traditional market share leaders and the names that have been familiar to MSPs going back a decade or more.

But in recent years, these companies have taken on private equity investments, and new players have emerged on the scene. Their hold on market share may even have started to slip a little bit, based on recent research. The market now includes upstart MSP tools platform companies such as HaloPSA, NinjaOne, Syncro, Atera, SuperOps.ai, and others.

Channel market research firm Canalys recently published its Global RMM and PSA Leadership Matrix for 2024. Non-subscribers to the service can only see the Champions quadrant of the report, but that quadrant offers some big changes and surprises for the MSSP market in 2024.

For instance, Kaseya is no longer in that top right Champions quadrant; NinjaOne and HaloPSA have moved into that quadrant. ConnectWise and N-able are still in the upper right Champions quadrant.

NinjaOne and HaloPSA Join Champions Quadrant

“NinjaOne and Halo had a lot of momentum this year and just crept in on the right-hand side,” Canalys Principal Analyst Robin Ody told ChannelE2E. “A lot of it has to do with product capability.”

These two companies have shown plenty of momentum in the MSP market over the past year, ChannelE2E noticed. HaloPSA has been a fixture at many 2024 channel events, and MSPs in attendance have been excited about the potential of pairing HaloPSA with their favorite RMM tools.

NinjaOne is also rapidly gaining momentum. The company is now number four in the market, behind the top three traditional providers. But while those top three are seeing their market share slip, NinjaOne is gaining.

Where's Kaseya?

Kaseya is not pictured in the matrix, so it’s in one of the other three quadrants that are not shown publicly. Ody told ChannelE2E that Kaseya is at the bottom right, where it still shows leadership but has lost momentum. Ody explained that the company may have scored high on coverage and has high revenue and big global coverage. They have a broad portfolio. But they may not rate as highly on other important metrics, including product development, investment in the portfolio, and positive ratings from MSPs. It’s not a measure of the size of the company.

What’s Next for the Heritage Brands?

ConnectWise, Kaseya, and N-able are all at a possible crossroads.

ConnectWise has just named a new CEO  --  the first from outside the company. Manny Rivelo presided over his first IT Nation event earlier this month. The company is talking about a single and comprehensive platform vision and an open ecosystem to integrate the other essential tools from third-party vendors that MSPs want to use. ConnectWise has paid a lot of attention to its backup and disaster recovery suite, which includes recent acquisitions of Axcient and Skykick. It’s possible that ConnectWise’s owners will pursue an IPO down the road.

Kaseya’s CEO Fred Voccola has introduced a low-price bundle of core MSP services that provides a managed detection and response option, too. The company says that it doesn’t want pricing to be a barrier to SMBs getting the IT and cybersecurity services that they need. Kaseya is selling the vision of ITComplete, where MSPs get everything they need from a single tools platform – Kaseya’s platform. Could an IPO also be in Kaseya’s future?

N-able is already a public company – the only one of the MSP tools platforms that is still public today. It also has a few private equity investors, and it was rumored to be on the sales block earlier this year with Barracuda as a potential buyer. No one commented on that rumor at the time, and it has since faded away.

N-able’s CEO John Pagliuca’s platform vision is also an open ecosystem of MSP tools from multiple platforms working with the N-able platform for MSPs, including backup tools such as the company’s Cove offering.

The years ahead will be an interesting time for these platform companies and the upstarts challenging them to take market share for RMM and PSA in the MSP tools platform market. AI is certain to play a role going forward, too.

Jessica C. Davis

Jessica C. Davis is editorial director of CyberRisk Alliance’s channel brands, MSSP Alert, MSSP Alert Live, and ChannelE2E. She has spent a career as a journalist and editor covering the intersection of business and technology including chips, software, the cloud, AI, and cybersecurity. She previously served as editor in chief of Channel Insider and later of MSP Mentor where she was one of the original editors running the MSP 501.

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