Datto: Listening and Looking Forward -
Rob Rae is vice president of business development at Datto Inc. He recently spoke with Michael Siggins, publisher of Channelpro-SMB , the balance between the current needs of MSPs and their end users while innovating for the future. This is an excerpt published this conversation
Channelpro-SMB :. In your business, you need to be constantly changing. What you learn from your partners and customers
Rob Rae: From a technological point of view, there are obviously a number of different ways designing your roadmap ... but ultimately what drives that is based partners. We are a channel company only. It is something that we take very, very proudly. [It’s] finally, how can we continue to make more profitable MSPs. So when we look at our track record, we look at where technology is going, it is (a) where can you find new opportunities for our customers, and (b) how can we reduce the total cost of ownership or make it easier for them to make more money in the current stock of goods.
Datto Backupify acquired in December 2014. This allowed us to get into the backup space SAS, because we saw a lot of physical things moved to the cloud. How an MSP remain profitable in this cloud? You must have a service or some type of layer you can still sell your customers, and that's why we came up with Office 365 backup. Mac continues to grow, so we have a Mac backup that will come soon.
We launched our agents and now Linux Linux environments can save. So it is constantly evolving as the needs of MSPs are. I think that's where our growth was fueled from
Channelpro-SMB :? How to reconcile the needs of end users and the needs and skills of your customers continue to innovate
Rae: We have a fantastic crew at Datto is very preliminary garde. Then we validate by MSP. The key is, well, everything is going to the cloud. We all become CSPs. But as when we converted resellers managed service providers, this is an evolution.
The key is to continue to focus on what's next and development towards what is next. And this balance comes from the application to the end user [and] MSP accomplishment. There is a delicate balance, making sure you have a pulse of your customers in our case, the MSP-MSP and having a pulse of what their customers are looking for is really critical.
Channelpro-SMB: How do you reach the next billion?
Rae: There are different ways you can design your roadmap. Our commitment is to stay 100 percent channel focused. We have no intention of wavering from it, which means for us to continue this accelerated growth, we must constantly innovate new technologies. We have our DNA [Datto Networking Appliance Router] product, we announced DattoCon15, which will help MSPs from a point of view of connectivity. We mentioned the Apple agent, we mentioned the Linux agent. ... We are confident that we can continue on the fast track we're on. The company that will win is the one that continues to innovate and grow our customers.
Note that much of what we do is not so much about speeds and feeds. We leave with great educational content, sales techniques, marketing techniques. We invest a lot of money to help our partners in their strategy go-to-market. So we got that nice balance between being a first technology company with technology that works, but also be able to demonstrate to our customers, train our customers and help our customers on the implementation of how powerful I sell it? How can I add value to this and how can I make recurring revenue out of it
Channelpro-SMB :? On this first billion, how much is the recurring revenue
Rae: Most of it. And it's the same thing we see with the channel. This does not include the sale of real hardware. The hardware is a physical cost. It puts skin in the game. It requires your customers to make this investment. It is a traditional sale that I think people are used to. That said, the appearance of recurring revenue is the critical part.
We have recently slashed prices of our equipment. We do not want the Capex is the question to stop the sale. We want to encourage them to focus on recurring revenue, which is what we're all in this game for
Channelpro-SMB.? What are the best features you offer partners
Rae: one of the things I talked a little about how to show this stuff. Everyone understands the disaster recovery backup, even the typical layman. The key is that other applications can go with this and how do you position it? We're not focusing as [on] data backup, but the recovery thereof and continuity around him. How do I keep my business and keep it going down? Therefore, you need to focus your sales on things like the cost of this downtime more than the reason for the downtime. If you focus your marketing around the cost of downtime, you can fill this gap through virtualization. So we came up with an RTO calculator it two years ago to help people calculate downtime in an elevator pitch.
More recently, we have done with the demo kit disaster, which helps people demonstrate the continuity of their customers a very easy way. So when you ask what assets are there a ton. ... We have almost all the tools that MSPs would need to be able to correctly position the continuity
Channelpro-SMB :. You just finished co-writing your first book, Under Attack :. How to protect your business and bank account fast growing, highly motivated and highly hazardous CyberCrime Rings [Celebrity Press, Jan. 2016] Can you tell us a give insight
Rae: is a view of the end user and speaks in the same conversation I was going with you. I use some very basic examples for very small businesses in situations where downtime is affecting their business ... part of the problem is that no one thinks that the cost of this is that until they are effectively in this nightmare scenario. So the idea here was to help MSPs be able to position it correctly in very simple examples base. It is designed for end user to understand the continuity
Channelpro-SMB: .. Talk about DattoCon16
Rae: This will be our fourth annual event. It is in Nashville, Tennessee on June 20. The content is designed around helping people with their sales of continuity in a perspective MSP. Our keynote speaker is Steve Wozniak. ... We have some wonderful, wonderful content ... and we will ensure that it is of value.
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