ConnectWise also announced that the Automation Nation event will return to the ConnectWise calendar in early 2024.
Ameer Karim, EVP and GM of Unified Monitoring and Management at ConnectWise
ORLANDO – As might be expected, the focus of ConnectWise at their IT Nation Connect event here was their new technology, particularly the evolution and future of their unified Asio platform, which they introduced two years ago with a clear message that it was the future of the company. Asio contains an RMM component. However ,ConnectWise had long had another RMM product, Now branded ConnectWise Automate, it was originally LabTech, and came through that acquisition, although a healthy portion of the RMM techs at Automation Nation events could be heard referring to the product as LabTech years after the formal name change. The growth of Asio led to talk about Automate’s future, some inspired by customer attempts to sow FUD and some prompted by logical concerns about Automate’s future in an Asio World. ConnectWise made a point of addressing these issues, and provided clarification of Automate’s future in the Thursday technology keynote.
Ameer Karim, EVP and GM of Unified Monitoring and Management at ConnectWise, emphasized in the keynote that ConnectWise is still aggressively investing in Automate and that they are committed to maintaining it as an alternative RMM solution.
“We resolved over 300 known issues with Automate this year,” he told the audience. “We added new features in eight new updates, and we processed over eight million scripts. On the horizon, we plan on adding hyperautomation like in Asio. We are fully committed to investing in Automate, and we wanted to put the end-of-life rumours to bed.”
“There was an issue with us having two RMM products with Asio and Automate,” said Jeff Bishop, ConnectWise EVP and GM of Product Management. “As we started building out our Asio RMM, customers said we weren’t giving enough love to Automate. The problem was that Asio was our foundation, and things get built there, although they may be used with other solutions.”
Bishop acknowledged that this created problems for the company.
“Both social media and our competitors started rumours that we would be end-of-lifing Automate to create FUD concerns,” he noted.
“We still have dozens of engineers on Automate,” Bishop continued. “We are continuing to build it. We do think a lot of new customers and big customers will go to Asio, but we have a solid commitment to Automate.”
ConnectWise also announced that the Automation Nation event would make its return in February 2024, although Bishop emphasized that the event will be broader than the Automate offering itself.
“We wanted to revitalize the ConnectWise Automate event in order to get the engineers together,” he said. “We would have done it this year, but we couldn’t get the logistics done. Jason [Magee, the CEO] was adamant that it would be back in 2024, and it will be.”
Bishop also stressed that Automation Nation will not just be about the Automate Solution.
“It will also be about things like workflows and bots,” he said.
