Kaseya is directing backup and disaster recovery (BDR) customers to its MSP partners. More than a lead generation program, Kaseya claims the effort hands MSPs fully qualified customers who are ready to pay MSPs an annual recurring revenue (ARR) fee for BDR services. The effort involves a new Unitrends Done Deal BDR solutions program.
Kaseya and Unitrends, backed by the same private equity firm, essentially merged earlier this year. While Kaseya mainly offers IT management tools for MSPs, Unitrends specializes in data protection technology -- mostly in the midmarket and enterprise sector.
But Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola and private equity parent Insight Venture Partners saw cross-sell and upsell opportunities across the Kaseya and Unitrends target markets.
Piecing Together BDR Sales for MSPs
During the IT Glue GlueCon 2018 conference in September 2018, Voccola hinted that Kaseya was working on a unique way to direct Unitrends customers -- not just raw sales leads -- to MSPs. Fast forward to present day, and that sales program is now ready for MSP consumption, Kaseya asserts.
The program offers a guaranteed, signed, new customer acquisition business model for MSPs, the company says. Those MSPs, in turn, can cross-sell and upsell the customers to additional services powered by Kaseya's technologies.
In addition to driving new revenue toward MSPs, Kaseya positions the program as a cost-saver for partners. For instance, the typical MSPs spends about $875 for a sales qualified lead (SQL) and $3,072 to acquire a new customer, according to research from Service Leadership. Kaseya's ability to funnel qualified customers to partners allows the partners to avoid those costs -- at least in terms of Unitrends customer wins, the company claims.
The Unitrends Done Deal BDR solutions program certainly sounds promising. But ChannelE2E has not determined exactly how Kaseya generates the qualified customers for MSPs. Nor does ChannelE2E know how many BDR customers Kaseya can funnel, overall, to partners.
BDR Competition
The Unitrends Done Deal BDR program arrives at a key time for Kaseya and the MSP technology market.
Each of the five major MSP industry software providers has major BDR ambitions. Datto is considered the market leader, though rivals Continuum, Kaseya and SolarWinds MSP each have their own data protection software engines. ConnectWise, meanwhile, resells and integrates with multiple third-party options.
Additional reporting by Dan Kobialka.
