Kaseya remodels Powered Services using philosophies of just-acquired ID Agent

Monday, Kaseya announced the acquisition of ID Agent, and consolidated all their security solutions in that business. Tuesday, they are rebooting their turnkey Powered Services offerings – with some major conceptual additions from ID Agent.

Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s CEO

Kaseya has made a pair of announcements from their Connect IT event in Las Vegas. On Monday they beefed up their security portfolio significantly, with the acquisition of Bowie MD-based ID Agent. ID Agent brings Dark Web monitoring and anti-phishing simulation and training to Kaseya’s security portfolio. They will also bring new management to it, as all the security products from the other security companies will be folded into ID Agent, which will continue to be run as a separate business unit. The second announcement, the next generation of Kaseya Powered Services, adds ID Agent’s security products to that portfolio. It also adds much of ID Agent’s philosophy, which includes things like providing an expert to help MSPs close deals with prospects on the phone. While Kaseya Powered Services has been a highly successful offering Kaseya believes the new version will take it to the next level.

ID Agent brings their flagship offering, Dark Web ID, a dark web monitoring platform, which identifies, analyzes and proactively monitors for an organization’s compromised or stolen employee and customer data. They also have a newly-released product BullPhish ID, a phishing simulator and security awareness training platform.

“We launched BullPhish ID earlier this year because it was a natural extension of our Dark Web platform,” said Kevin Lancaster, ID Agent’s CEO.

ID Agent’s offerings are designed and priced specifically for MSPs, so don’t really compete against enterprise offerings in the space from vendors like Okta and Duo.

“ID Agent was appealing to us because they have 95 per cent market share for this category of product,” said Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s CEO. “Their business has been growing at over 250 per cent a year. The company has two kinds of employees – an ex-MSP owner or top-secret grade security professionals. That’s the whole company.”

Voccola said that the metrics will be sure to appeal to MSPs.

“The numbers will be staggering,” he said. “Approximately 80 per cent of the MSPs that see the ID Agent product buy it within seven days. Of the MSPs who buy it, more than three-quarters of them have used it to acquire a new customer within 30 days.

“The BullPhish product combined with ID Agent suite is something that every MSP will be using,  and we will have 90 per cent share with it,” Voccola added. “It is priced very low, and MSPs make a lot of money with it.”

Like the other companies Kaseya has acquired over the past year or so, ID Agent will operate as an independent business unit, with Lancaster leading it.

“The ID Agent name will also be staying,” Voccola said. “We aren’t getting rid of it.”

Kaseya’s existing AuthAnvil identity and access management solution, and Cyberhawk from RapidFire Tools, another Kaseya company, will all be consolidated within ID Agent.

“Kevin and Kevin’s team will run entire security business of Kaseya,” Voccola indicated

Today, of Kaseya’s 20,000 MSPs, about 4000 leverage AuthAnvil and about 1000 Cyberhawk. Voccola expects that those numbers should increase significantly as part of the new security organization.

ID Agent is also playing a key role in the second Kaseya announcement, Kaseya Powered Services 2.0. The original Kaseya Powered Services were launched in 2017, as turnkey bundles of sales and marketing tools designed to build new recurring revenue streams. While Voccola said they have been successful, they have been revamped, to incorporate best practices and policies implemented by ID Agent in their own offerings.

“Kaseya Powered Services has been doing very well, and we have thousands of MSPs who have built businesses around it,” Voccola said. “It has focused on building security and network management businesses – AuthAnvil and Traverse. However, we have noticed that one of the things ID Agent does really well is build revenue-generating businesses rapidly in new areas. So in the last three months, we have put a serious amount of investment behind ID Agent, to do what they have done.”

This includes implementing ID Agent’s Goal Assist program in Kaseya Powered Services.

“In Powered Services we have been building marketing plans, and doing pricing and packages,” Voccola said. “Goal Assist provides MSP experts who help MSPs sell and close business on the phone. This will be a part of Powered Services going forward.”

Dan Tomaszewski, [ID Agent’s VP, channel success and training] rearchitected how we deliver our services to our partners and produced this,” Lancaster said. “No other vendor does this.”

The new Powered Services provide a marketing strategy success blueprint that covers everything from overcoming objections to effectively positioning bundled solutions, as well as full-scale sales and marketing playbooks to help MSPs along every step of the sales cycle. MSPs also receive a 30-, 60-, and 90-day guided course, as well as quarterly business reviews.

The new Powered Services packages will cover three areas – security, compliance and backup.

The pricing is less than the first generation of services, and Voccola said that this is another thing borrowed from ID Agent.

“We charge customers less than our cost of delivering the service, which comes from ID Agent,” Voccola said. “It’s a couple hundred dollars. We do want the MSPs to have some skin in the game, but they will easily get that back and more with one sale.”