LogMeIn looks to their new global deal with Pax8, their first distribution agreement the MSP space with LastPass, as having potential to expand their presence significantly in the SMB market.
Harvey Grasty, Vice President, Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, LogMeIn
Last summer, LogMeIn expanded the market for their LastPass enterprise password management and single sign-on solution by adding design and billing features necessary for the MSP market. Today, they are expanding that MSP business further, through a new global partnership with cloud distributor Pax8, which makes LastPass available to Pax8’s MSP partners.
LastPass has been a strong and successful brand for years, but until last year had not been adapted to the MSP market until the changes built new sub-account functionality directly into LastPass, to provide a single view of multiple MSP accounts.
“When we talked to MSPs, they had a couple requirements,” said Harvey Grasty, Vice President, Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, LogMeIn. “They wanted to manage all of their customers from one pane of glass. They also wanted a monthly consumption-based billing model to more easily wrap LastPass into the services they offered on a monthly basis. This is what we delivered last year, and we have been very successful in the MSP market since we did that.”
Expanding into distribution to expand further into the MSP market was part of the strategy from the outset.
“We always planned to broaden the opportunity beyond offering it to MSPs directly,” Grasty said. “But while that was always in the plan, it took a little longer than we anticipated. To connect to a platform like Pax8, there is some back end work that had to be built in order to automate the process.”
Grasty thinks that LogMeIn’s entry into the MSP market was well timed.
“We think that it is still really early in the evolution of password management and single sign-on for MSPs,” he said. “It still feels like a green fields opportunity in the MSP market. To get adoption, you need a great user experience, and we feel ours is super strong. Our brand name also helps. We are well known. LastPass is a really strong brand, bolstered by 25 million consumer users.”
While all of the broadline distributors these days have cloud practices and a good entrée into the MSP market, Grasty said Pax8 stood out for LogMeIn in several ways.
“While the broadliners cover different types of partners, Pax8 is very focused on MSPs,” he indicated. “We saw this relationship as specifically being able to improve our focus on SMBs and the MSPs who serve that market. Pax8 also provides all the support and sales to MSPs. They take on all the onus around sales and support, so from our perspective, it is very highly leveraged. They are very hands on, which is not always the case with the broadliners.”
For now, Pax8 is LogMeIn’s only MSP distributor for LastPass.
“We want to be channel-agnostic,” Grasty said. “If the market for MSPs is big enough, and I believe it is, and there are other players who can serve MSPs in this or another region, we would definitely be open to it. Pax8 now has a global reach, as they now have an office EMEA. This agreement is a global one, but we do expect the primary focus will be on North America. We will definitely keep in mind other players for other needs.”
