Attended IT Nation’s Global Connect conference intending to learn about their Data Protection and Cyber Resilience features. I did hear about some interesting tech, but I also took away some clearer understandings on what matters to MSPs delivering BaaS and DRaaS.
video transcript
Recently had the opportunity to attend an IT Nation event, hosted by Connectwise. Of course, as a data protection person, I was most interested in the breakout sessions that dealt with resilience usually underpinned by the Kaseya or their cloud backup solution components — though there was a surprisingly insightful session by Slide. Outside of the product feature sets there were two key takeaways for me:
(1) How to operationalize BaaS & DRaaS
The focus groups continually leaned in on “How do you operationalize data protection and resilience across myriad disparate environments, when you usually can’t affect subscribers’ choices in production platforms — and yet need to offer a consistently reliable assurance of recovery as a value-based business and service“. For many of the MSPs, it wasn’t about the coolest or newest feature, it was about reliability, extensibility, and often with the opportunity to add additional value and stickiness through expertise and reputation. I’ve been a fan of managed services for BaaS & DRaaS for many years, so it was great to soak up the business drivers that are fueling the those MSPs’ solution strategies.
(2) Data Protection’s synergy with service desks
The other key takeaway was the compelling differentiation of a data protection solution whose stack is grounded in ticketing, help desks, and business workflow. Most major data protection software stacks have semi equitable capabilities for general protection and yet each have something that they are known for. Whether that is cyber resilience, AI capabilities, breath of protection for legacy data centers, or purpose-built for virtualization. Everyone has a “best of” in some category, but I hadn’t thought about — if you’re foundational data protection core is intrinsically grounded in a ticketing system, then that opens up some really interesting scenarios for business continuity and disaster recovery … where disruptions are initially triaged through a support system, their resilience procedures are often tied back to BC/DR plans within a tracking platform, and recoveries are sometimes invoked through orchestrated workflows.
I’m not suggesting that the portfolio of products covered at the event were the only ones that focus on repeatable business value creation nor the only ones that are able to integrate with your favorite service desks. What I am suggesting is that 3 days among hundreds of MSPs – many of whom are delivering backup, disaster recovery, and cyber resilience – we’re using those two measures as how they chose the data protection tools that they’re offering to their clients.
This will certainly add a couple questions to my upcoming cloud powered resilience research project. In the meantime, if you’re an MSP … what matters most to you … in the software stacks that you choose to offer to your subscribers.
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