HyAlto and ConnectWise IT Nation Explore

Earlier in June, we were in Orlando for ConnectWise’s Explore partner conference. Jason Magee, CEO, took the stage to provide assurance about the company’s direction following its acquisition by a private equity firm in February.

“It is the same names and the same faces that got us here today,” he told 1,350+ attendees. “It’s the team that will continue to get us to where we will be for the next 10 years. With ConnectWise, it’s all about the team. With some other companies the faces and names are more likely to change, and that is not the case here. There will be continuity.”

In hand with that promise, the conference included an announcement about the new ConnectWise Marketplace, a portal where MSPs can purchase products and services from ConnectWise’s third-party partners with which to better manage their operations and their service-delivery to customers. This includes independent software vendors like HyAlto.

ConnectWise exists to help MSPs be successful. It has built a unique ecosystem around an award-winning business management platform that automates the full lifecycle of technology service delivery, from sales and service to project tracking and back-office functions. ConnectWise claims some 25,000 partners in more than 65 countries. Many of these MSPs provision VMware and Veeam services for their enterprise clients, both of which we support.

“We believe in an open ecosystem, the power of choice and providing a single pane of glass view” reads the ConnectWise description, which puts them on exactly the same page as HyAlto when it comes to solving the most acute point points for small to mid-sized MSPs attempting to expand in a multi-cloud world.

Spending three days at the event was fantastic. ConnectWise does an outstanding job of creating and facilitating collegial and non-competitive networking events where MSPs can come together, discuss and share intelligence that can be used to advance their business.

This is our tribe. Not everyone with whom we spoke is embracing a multi-cloud business strategy, but if not today, they likely will tomorrow. We found plenty of ears willing to hear what we had to say, along with widespread affirmation that HyAlto is a much-needed answer to those chronic provisioning, management and metering challenges that MSPs have.

Our team didn’t spend three days in Orlando just for the weather and to hang out with a cool crowd, but to collect that front-line intelligence to help us decide if, following our integrations with VMware and Veeam, pursuing a partnership with ConnectWise and its Marketplace should be the next step in our growth plan for 2019.

We came away optimistic and certain we can add value to both ConnectWise and its MSP ecosystem. Magee’s comments as the successor to long-time chief Arnie Bellini gave us a reason to be so. In particular, he reaffirmed ConnectWise’s commitment to Bellini’s four-pillar strategy for the company:

• Customer success
• The as-a-service (aaS) platform
• The ecosystem (where HyAlto fits), and
• Cybersecurity

In that respect, Magee’s keynote offered little that was new for the core ConnectWise crowd. For them and for us, that is a good thing. We definitely plan to attend the larger ConnectWise IT Nation event in Orlando this fall and continue the conversation.