Autotask has confirmed that Senior VP Jay McBain is exiting the company later this year. On the one hand, McBain’s overall tenure at Autotask will only be about 12 months. But on the other hand, McBain made some key moves that influenced the company’s messaging and direction with managed services providers. Here’s a look at some of McBain’s moves during his time at Autotask, and some questions I have about Autotask going forward.
Among McBain’s moves:
At Autotask Community Live earlier this year, new CEO Mark Cattini was set to kick off the conference and outgoing Chief Visionary Officer Bob Godgart was set to follow with a vision keynote. But I noticed the agenda changed shortly before the event. I believe it was McBain who flip-flopped the keynotes, subtly positioning the day as closure for Godgart and a launching point for Cattini. Godgart cleared out his office shortly thereafter but he remains chairman.
McBain also had a role in rethinking Autotask’s community strategy. In 2010, Autotask tried to drive grass-roots user groups — where Autotask’s users actually drove the gatherings. But attendance was light and growth directions were unclear, according to those who attended those early gatherings. In stark contrast, rival ConnectWise has built successful user groups across North America, Europe and Australia. Some of those events typically attract 100 MSPs each quarter. ConnectWise has backed the effort with consistent funding and strong community engagement, led by Director of Community Jeannine Edwards.
Shifting Autotask’s community direction, McBain had a hand this year in launching Autotask Community On Tour, a multi-city road show. The one-day events are broken into multiple segments. I don’t have a clear indicator on attendance figures, but Autotask promotions suggest the on-tour effort will attract more than 1,000 attendees overall. And finally, McBain tried to push Autotask into new market segments — such as audio visual resellers.
Lingering Questions
McBain’s transition from Autotask raises some questions. On the one hand, he remains with the company through the end of 2011. But on the other hand his last day in the office was Aug. 31. I think that basically says he’s done with day-to-day efforts and transitioning his role to others at Autotask.
Autotask has made multiple executive management changes since last year. Cattini and McBain arrived in December 2010. CFO Vince Zumbo arrived in early 2011. Familiar veterans like Godgart (formerly CEO and then chief visionary officer) and Bob Vogel (formerly chief marketing officer) left the company this year (though Godgart remains chairman). McBain’s exit seems strange given his short tenure but I don’t want to hype the situation or overstate the impact. There are plenty of numerous, long-tenured folks at Autoask such as Senior VP Len DiCostanzo.
It’s clear that Cattini has been positioning Autotask as a SaaS and cloud business platform provider — somewhat akin to Salesforce.com or NetSuite for the IT channel. Cattini has also vowed to ensure Autotask is truly a cross-platform cloud application, accessible from all major web browsers. I’m seeking to determine how those efforts are coming along.
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Posted In: Cloud Computing | HR | Professional Services Automation (PSA) | Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service
Tags: Autotask | Bob Godgart | Bob Vogel | ConnectWise | Jay McBain | Jeannine Edwards | Mark Cattini
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Cool stuff with the Cross-browser in the newest release. That’s the news type stuff I’m concerned with as an MSP. For the details about their upgrades they spoke of at Community Live check this out: http://www.autotask.com/company/release.htm?id=155
Hi Jake,
I appreciate your note, the link and your readership. But short-term I think the story is McBain and Autotask’s management team. It has evolved significantly since December 2010. Curious to see if the pieces McBain managed continue on under additional managers, an eventual dedicated replacement, etc.
Naturally, cross-browser is important. But priorities like that come from the executive team. It was Cattini who fast-tracked the corss-browser effort. Curious to see what else Cattini will be fast-tracking in the weeks and months ahead.
-jp
Joe, as you know I am involved with 2 companies here in Las Vegas; Business Continuity Technologies (MSP) and XiloCore (Providing Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in the cloud). At BCT we use ConnectWise and at XiloCore we use Autotask. I thus get to observe both AutoTask and ConnectWise from a unique vantage point on their respective company culture, channel initiatives and product strengths. Both Bob Godgart and Arni Bellini have made significant contributions to the channel. It will be interesting to see what AutoTask’s next moves are going to be. By the way, has anyone done an independent benchmarking comparison of the 2 offerings? Thanks for keeping us informed.
Lester,
Yes, you certainly do bring a unique view to the party. I don’t believe anyone has published in-depth benchmarking/reviews of the major PSA software platforms.
Re: Autotask’s next potential moves… At Autotask Community Live, CEO Mark Cattini offered some concise next steps (i.e., cross-platform browser support, mobility, etc.) without hyping his vision. I’m traveling at the moment but checking around to see if Autotask is delivering on those initiatives.
-jp
Joe,
My two cents on “if AutoTask is delivering on those initiatives”. It’s yes and no. I’ve seen on Windows + Non-IE browsers, the support seems to be more rapidly improving than on say on the Mac. On a Mac running Safari or Chrome AT has made some steps forward, but there are still many pieces of core functionality missing as compared to running AT in a browser running on top of Windows.
My opinion, AT still has a ways to go to get true fully cross platform / cross browsers support. Progress in this area is happening, but it is very, very slow.
-jh
Jason: Thanks for your two cents. Please keep me posted as you see other cross-platform milestones potentially emerge.
-jp
Atask compatibility for the Mac has certainly improved. Contracts and Projects modules are now both supported on Safari and the Mac. But there are still error pop ups. The admin console is still unsupported. And unfortunately you cannot assign stupid functions within the admin module to non-admin users (which is supposedly on its way). I’ve found also that rather than pay and use Autotask mobile, I would rather use Autotask via Safari on the iPad. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing for Autotask; as it shows that their app is just too slow and cumbersome at this time. All of that said, the software continues to grow and improve with some really cool new features such as thief “wall” interface and a great new alert feature.
Scott,
I hope business is treating you well. Thanks for the reality check you shared above. Assuming your observations are accurate, I appreciate the fact that you mentioned the progress even as you pointed out some of the hurdles.
Hope to see you on the road soon. And thanks for all the insights over the years.
-jp