Kaseya earlier this week unveiled two new automation tools for managed services providers. But if you dig a little deeper you’ll see how Kaseya is evolving its PSA (professional services automation) strategy and the company’s overall financial software strategy. Here’s the update.
When Kaseya unveiled its Service Billing 1.0 and Service Desk 1.3 modules this week, I suspected the software was somehow related to Kaseya’s targeted acquisitions (Datatune in 2009 and ObjAcct in 2010) as well as Kaseya’s so-called Business Center PSA project. I was half-right.
Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie provided some insights over email. He indicated:
- Service Billing 1.0 emerges from Kaseya’s Datatune acquisition from 2009, more recently known as Business Center PSA. “Its been completely overhauled and integrated with Kaseya’s automation framework to provide a flexible managed services billing engine. While it can do a good job of PSA functions its really intended to provide a way for MSPs to bill in different ways for current and new services that are not able to be accounted for and billed today using more traditional PSA,” Blackie wrote.
- Neither Service Billing 1.0 nor Service Desk 1.3 are related to the ObjAcct buyout. “Objacct is undergoing extensive work to provide the financial spine for Kaseya going forward,” Blackie wrote.
It sounds like Kaseya may share some more details about its ObjAcct strategy during the Kaseya Connect User Conference (May 1-3, Las Vegas).
Cooperating, Competing and Branding
Kaseya’s decision to drop the fledgling Business Center PSA brand is interesting. On the one hand, Business Center PSA was never really a marketed brand; it was simply a name Kaseya was using in its service provider product roadmap. By branding instead around Service Billing 1.0, I think Kaseya wants to avoid the traditional PSA battles (Autotask, ConnectWise and Tigerpaw Software) and potentially shift the conversation to financial and billing capabilities.
Meanwhile, the major PSA providers and Kaseya continue to work with one another. Autotask, ConnectWise and Tigerpaw each are sponsoring the Kaseya Connect conference. And each of those PSA providers continues to integrate with Kaseya’s platform. Just last week, ConnectWise announced its latest Kaseya integration.
Longer term keep an eye on the ObjAcct code. I’ll be curious to see where the code surfaces within the Kaseya product line. Perhaps we’ll get some answers at the user conference.
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Posted In: Cloud Computing | Finance | On Premise | Platforms | Professional Services Automation (PSA) | Remote Monitoring & Management Software | Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service
Tags: Autotask | Business Center PSA | ConnectWise | Gerald Blackie | Kaseya | Kaseya Connect User Conference | Professional Services Automation | PSA software | Service Billing 1.0 | Service Desk 1.3 | Tigerpaw Software
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[...] in 2011. Amid heightened competition, Kaseya’s R&D delivered several new products — such as Service Billing 1.0 and Service Desk 1.3 — and the company reached out to some MSPs that were considering alternative platforms to measure [...]