Datto: ‘We Are In The Golden Age’ Of The IT Channel Now
‘That shows how resilient we are,’ says Eric Torres, director of channel development at Datto. ‘That shows how well you guys were prepared to take your customers on to that work-from-anywhere journey, to make sure that they are secure and that you are providing them with that technology to help them along the way.’
There’s so much opportunity in the channel right now that “we are in the golden age right now,” one executive from Datto said.
“What we have come to learn is that we are in the golden age right now,” he said. ”If you look at the term golden age, it‘s looking back at a certain period and saying, ’Those were good times. We weren’t at battle with anybody. There was no famine. We were good to go.’”
Torres, director of channel development at Norwalk, Conn.-based Datto, spoke at The Channel Company‘s NextGen+ 2021 conference in Anaheim, Calif. this week about positioning cybersecurity to grow margin and increase retention.
“Right now we’re in the midst of that in technology,“ he said. ”Fast forward three years we’re all going to be…looking at 2021, 2022 and going, ‘That was a really good year. We really sold a lot that year. We really grew as a company.’”
According to a Forrester report, since the COVID-19 pandemic MSPs are considered more agile, responsive and cross-functional. Many customers said their MSPs “saved the day” for them during the pandemic, Torres said.
“[Clients said MSPs] kept me afloat, they kept me protected, they provided all that security,” he said. ”The end users finally got to see that value that you guys provided, now they‘re starting to get it.”
According to a Datto State of the MSP survey, 22 percent of MSPs reported up to five percent revenue growth per year over the last three years. Twenty-four percent reported up to 10 percent revenue growth. One in five MSPs surveyed reported rapid growth of more than 20 percent per year over the last three years.
“That shows how resilient we are,” he said. ”That shows how well you guys were prepared to take your customers on to that work-from-anywhere journey, to make sure that they are secure and that you are providing them with that technology to help them along the way.”
MSPs surveyed reported that economic uncertainty due to the pandemic will likely have a downstream effect on their business revenue, cash flow and receivables. However, some MSPs reported that the increased move to the cloud may offset those losses.
Another space to grow is in cybersecurity.
He said the average ransomware attack requires up to 287 days to recover and costs small businesses about $5,600 in ransom.
“I am sick and tired of talking about ransomware, but the fact is your end users still need to hear it,” he said. ”They still don‘t get it. They still don’t quite understand how much ransomware is out there. You may be sick of talking about it but you cannot stop. You have to keep talking about this to your customers. This will get them to understand how prevalent it is.”
To ability to identify, protect, detect, respond and recover and how MSPs can do that should be the conversation that is happening with the client, Torres told the audience.
“We’re all going to have that moment where something bad happens,” he said ”It’s about how resilient we are and how we bounce back. That’s what we’re doing at Datto. That’s how we’re fortifying our own house and then teaching you guys how to position this to your customers.”
There‘s also massive margin opportunity in on-prem servers, PCs, private cloud, SaaS and public cloud.
Those days are over where an employee has to move to a new city for a job, he said. And MSPs made that happened.
“We’re betting heavily on that,” he said. ”At Datto we’re seeing how we can help with the remote worker and keeping them just as secure no matter where they are.”
Austin Goddard, sales manager for Charlotte, North Carolina-based solution provider gTECHserv, said it was great to hear how Datto is moving forward into the security sector with their RMM.
“It was a lot of exciting information about how they are working and supporting MSPs while they continue to offer great service,“ he said.
He echoed Torres’ statement that end users don’t understand how sophisticated threat actors are.
“They think that the hackers are just random people in their basement, so being able to educate and offer a solution that protects them against ransomware is extremely important,” he said.