Kaseya has acquired Unigma to help MSPs address cloud cost management across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and additional clouds. Unigma CEO Kirill Bensonoff will remain with the company as part of the deal.
An official announcement was expected about 8:05 a.m. ET today, but news about Kaseya buying Unigma has already surfaced on Kaseya's website. The deal has been planned for several months. The result is Unigma Cloud Management Suite, which empowers MSPs to "automate routine tasks, and optimize cost management through detailed cloud utilization analysis," the company says.
Speculation about the cloud management suite surfaced last week on ChannelE2E.
Unigma will remain an independent Kaseya company with founder, Kirill Bensonoff, serving as CEO and as product manager of the Unigma Cloud Management Suite. The suite includes Cloud Manager to monitor AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure instances, and other public clouds; Cloud Billing Manager and Cloud Cost Optimizer to help MSPs monetize the cloud while helping customers to get their costs under control.
The new Unigma Cloud Management Suite will surface at this week's Kaseya Connect 2017 conference in Las Vegas.
MSPs and Cloud IaaS Management: It's About Time
The move signals the MSP industry's belated -- but much needed -- move into cost management services for infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
We've been tracking the need for AWS & Azure cloud cost monitoring/management tools ever since launching ChannelE2E.
RMM (remote monitoring and management) software providers got their start assisting MSPs with PC and server management. More recently, cloud-oriented management tools from Kaseya, SolarWinds MSP (via the LogicNow acquisition) and others have helped MSPs to maintain Office 365 for several years.
ConnectWise largely signaled the shift toward Office 365 billing management with CloudConsole's launch in 2015 before gradually extending to Azure management. Autotask has since responded with CSP Boss, which is based on MessageOps.
Still, the major RMM providers have been late to the public cloud billing and IaaS cost optimization industry. Numerous third-party cloud cost management and monitoring tools have emerged in recent years. In addition to Unigma, names to know include Cloudyn, CloudMGR, CloudCheckr and CloudAbility.
Microsoft Buying Cloudyn?: Competition within the cloud cost management tools sector will surely intensify. Microsoft, for instance, is considering a Cloudyn buyout for $50 million to $70 million, recent reports suggest. And SolarWinds MSP has been evaluating ways to extend more of its midmarket IT management tools into the MSP sector.
Kaseya Must Carefully Manage M&A
Meanwhile, Kaseya must carefully manage Unigma and relationships to sister offerings like VSA (RMM capabilities) and Traverse (cloud infrastructure management). Under former executive leadership, Kaseya had a mixed track record on the M&A front.
But under CEO Fred Voccola, who arrived in 2015, Kaseya has gradually stabilized its business and returned to growth mode. In fact, Unigma could be the latest piece in an overall growth strategy that involves a potential Kaseya IPO filing in the second half of 2018.
