Many cybersecurity companies offer similar types of tools, but Hornetsecurity sees their differentiation as offering a broader range of features than their competitors, something that is increasingly important as customers show an increased preference for acquiring everything through a single vendor.

German-headquartered cybersecurity firm Hornetsecurity has announced the release of 365 Multi-Tenant Manager, which will enable managed service providers to effortlessly secure and manage Microsoft 365 tenants in one central platform. The tool will greatly simplify the task of managing multi-vendor Microsoft 365 environments for MSPs. While many other MSP-focused cybersecurity companies offer similar management tools, Hornetsecurity is emphasizing that theirs has more functionality – something that has become increasingly important as more customers want to consolidate around a single vendor.

Hornetsecurity, whose global headquarters is in Hannover Germany, is an established player in Europe, where they started in the small business space, in a market which at that time was served primarily by variations of enterprise solutions which were not really appropriate for the market. They made their physical entry into the North American market in 2018, establishing offices in Pittsburgh, where their North American business remains headquartered today. While they are still focused on the SMB, because they believe it remains a difficult market for traditional enterprise vendors to penetrate, they have added some large customers as well as they built up more brand recognition. They also now have over a thousand partners in North America.

“We are now the largest European company by far,” said Michael Posey, North American lead channel sales engineer at Hornetsecurity. “We have that name recognition there, because we have been around for a long time. Coming from Europe is a slightly different journey, but we also have had that challenge of building up name recognition here.”

When Hornetsecurity started out they sold through a variety of channels, including direct to resellers and direct to customers, but as they have matured, they have increasingly focused on the MSP market.

“Our stack really speaks to MSPs – from mom and pop shops to larger ones,” Posey said. “Our solutions cover the whole gamut of what they are offering, and fills what had been a big void for many. We have provided a tech stack that MSPs can use to service their clients.”

Where 365 Multi-Tenant Manager fits into the picture is its ability to greatly simplify the task of securing and managing all of their Microsoft 365 tenants from one central platform. Posey said this can translate into a saving of 80% of management and onboarding time per tenant. Hornetsecurity research shows that, on average, MSPs spend 12 hours for each new tenant onboarding and 3 hours per customer per month managing customers’ M365 environments.

“Before this, MSPs would dedicate a high level resource to get to a standard setting, with no certainty that this could be accomplished,” Posey stated. “Some could also do some scripts, but that can be more difficult from MSPs who are more on the development side. The Multi-Tenant Manager allows them to create policies and makes sure that the policies are in place. It is a new add to the quiver where MSPs have been struggling, to make it easy for them to manage these type of services.”

365 Multi-Tenant Manager provides MSPs with extensive dashboards for monitoring and reporting purposes. It simplifies and standardizes complex workflows in M365, eliminating the need to manage multiple Microsoft portals. Non-compliance is automatically detected, with built-in remediation and enforcement capabilities ensuring that all tenants remain compliant with settings defined by the MSP, addressing another headache that troubles MSPs. Any organization can quickly adopt optimal configurations and set up Entra, Intune, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and Teams solutions using the product’s out-of-the-box best practice templates, settings, and policies. The product’s toolbox approach also enables the creation of custom settings that automate PowerShell scripts, ensuring MSPs can meet each customer’s unique needs. MSPs can even utilize existing PowerShell scripts that they have already created for M365.

Many of the company’s competitors in this market already provide something similar to their MSPs, but Posey said that there is an important differentiation between them.

“There is not a single company that has all of features that we do,” he emphasized. “Lots of them have pieces, but none have all that we do. We offer a large number of services from one vendor and I think that puts us far ahead. It is something all MSPs managing multiple 365 environments would want to use.”

Posey said this was especially important because it meets a growing trend in the market.

“The last couple of years we have seen an increasing pullback by many customers to sourcing everything through a single vendor,” he noted. “If we can simplify this into a single pane of glass that is easy to support, it will have wide appeal.”
Hornetsecurity also simultaneously launched a DMAC manager, which tells the server what you want to do with messages that may not come from approved sources.

“We are making a lot of progress on new service offerings that answer a lot of people’s requests,” Posey concluded.